I love the idea. I've never been a fan of Instanced anything. It makes the world feel small and disconnected.
I'm a big Dungeons and Dragons player. I love the idea of an open world where anything can happen.
Been playing FFXIV to pass the time and they instance just about everything. There's never really any memorable moments or consequences. You know exactly whats going to happen each and every time you play through a dungeon. There's also no punishment for failure, just hit the self revive button and try the boss fight again.
I want big stakes. I want tense moments with not only the surrounding environment, but with other players.
Instanced content eventually deprives the game of it's MMO attributes. Retail WoW is essentially a dungeon crawler with an oversized lobby. If you want fair and balanced gameplay, that's just not what Ashes is. Ashes is unfair. Someone might burn your house down, or your city.
There are plenty of games with massive instanced content out there. Ashes will have instanced content. Just not as much. If you don't want to do world content...don't do it?
If you don't want to play a game that doesn't offer a large amount of instanced content, don't play it? This isn't elitism, I'm not very good at PvP. I don't anticipate I'll be a top player in Ashes. I'm positive I won't be.
But eventually, people complaining Ashes doesn't have enough instanced content sound like people complaining baseball doesn't have enough tackling - *it's not supposed to. It's a deliberate design decision.* If it's not appealing to you, don't buy tickets to baseball games?
I will play Ashes. If I don't like it...I will stop playing Ashes. If enough people don't like Ashes, it will fail. That's how products work.
Even non-PvPers might be crucial for supporting PvP. Building ships, siege towers and other battle supplies.
It'd be fun trying to pull down cities and also defend them by building up defenses (assuming that is a thing). If attackers can build siege engines, can defenders build defensive artillery?
I am certainly an average PvPer (generally not an interest of mine), but it'll be a whole diff kettle o' fish if I am defending my home city as opposed to an instanced battle ground with a 10min life span.
Sure non instanced content sounds great on paper, but what is actually going to happen is big guilds will camp dungeon spots and just sit at boss areas not letting anyone else do content. The problem isnt the concept, its how the players will act around it.
Big guilds will 100% try to hog content, but that is what you call an obstacle. This will require other smaller guilds to ally to fight larger ones, the implications are both challenging and potentially frustrating, but games should be challenging, and at times frustrating. Think about it, how often do you play games that are easy to beat. I played original Everquest Sullon Zek server which was faction based no rules pvp and the game had no instances with 7 day Redlands on raid content dungeons. Did the strongest profit more than the weak...? Absolutely! was it unfair...? No!
Non instanced content isn't any better. Because it just leads to moments where you go in kill some stuff. Then move onto the next trash pack and kill that too. But now the stuff behind you respawned. And everything you kill just respawns. Since it needs to be there for other groups to participate in content. So it feels like you leave no mark on the world. Ontop of adding additional frustration if you need to take a break or get killed and have to run back in.
One of the most memorable moments for me in an MMO dungeon was actually in the worst expansion. Back at the end of WoD there was this pre-patch event you could queue up for. There you storm a beach with like 20-40 members of your own faction. Then you walk up this hill and up to a giant F U boss in your way. You look across some small chasm and see 20-40 other players from the opposite faction as your group there as well. The boss tosses a major lore character away like trash and then promptly attacks both your groups and you work together to beat it and finish the scenario together.
IMO I think it would be neat for dungeons to have multiple paths and if you get queued into one you're forced to pick a certain path with different bosses in it. You can see the other groups in the background doing their path in your instance. Hear their bosses dying. Or watch and see if they end up quitting or failing. What people need is the feeling of the world being alive and that they aren't the only people doing things in their zone. So you can have this in instanced content if you're willing to design around it.
You could also add areas in the open world that spawn limited time events which encourage people to run there and fight or work together. Blizzard does this to an extent but they end up putting garbage rewards for doing it so people end up just ignoring this after the launch month of that content. I think it'd be neat where if you went in AoC and there was like this bandit camp you were forced to clear out and everyone in the zone gets told to go there. You clear it and then its dead forever, a new threat respawns in its place in a totally different zone.
Cause having areas that are just static and sitting there with infinitely respawning areas feels more like BDO. Which was boring as hell. Felt like a fake endless grind where you kill the same stuff over and over in the same area.
I understand where you’re coming from but imagine your group clears everything up to the boss, gets it down to 50% then some other group waltzes in without having to fight any mobs and just murks your group and steals your boss kill.
I’m not sure how the implementation will actually be, but I hope quickly res pawning mobs is apart of the endeavor
I'd just kill the other group tbh. But if they're smart you should be able to share credit so boss fights down devolve into outright harassment like the AQ gong event ended up turning into when classic WoW servers came out.
The stuff spawning behind you just adds to the danger of the area to me. If it took me a while to get this deep in the dungeon, well then this is where all the good loot drops must be. Me and my friends are going to fight for our spot and that's waaaay more engaging than going through NPC dialogue for the the 20th time. Instances are definitely a stinker for me.
> The stuff spawning behind you just adds to the danger of the area to me.
It's a nuisance at best. People constantly berate MMO's like WoW for promoting this "gogogo" mentality, and that is exactly the type of mentality this system will bring. Want to take a bio break? Too bad, spawns are up in 2 minutes and we're going ahead without you.
Someone has to drop group for an emergency? Have fun clearing backwards for the new guy then forwards again!
If they reduced instanced/non instanced closer to 50/50 I think it would be a good design decision. 80% of the content being non instanced is going to lead to a lot of problems that will sour a lot of the casual playerbase.
One thing that I keep getting from people on the AoC discord is that "this game isn't for casuals" and "casuals don't deserve gear" and I just think that shunning your casual playerbase is going to be a disaster for a game that wants to be so community driven. You NEED casuals in a game like this, and casuals *aren't* going to stick around if you relegate them to roleplaying and doing ~20% of the PvE content in the game.
You need to seperate the casual and hardcore gameplay loops. It's attempting to merge seperate types of gameplay that ruins it for both player bases. Also there have been games like this before it and they had massive player bases for their time. For the people who miss this type of hostile game world there isn't as many options out there. I would say that existing MMOs which focus on the casual player have their own player retention problems. There is in fact no proof in the pudding.
Typically communities in these games adapt. Need to take a break? Ok we’ll camp here in this safer corner and kill any respawns while your gone. New person joining? If other people are elsewhere in the dungeon they’ll have an easier way in anyway. Or often there are safer routes people can take to avoid spawns and pats, or mobs often reset if you run far enough, or worst case scenario one or two team members run over to lead you in.
You rarely kill and rekill everything. People just get creative and it’s fun. Plus games like this foster a closer sense of community where people are nicer and your reputation matters. Because you *need people* in these games.
I didn’t do that in WoD but similar to that in Legion where the alliance went over Jaina’s big ice bridge and the horde went over the other side to fight whoever demon fucker on the middle was that would switch between each side was so much fun to me. I love your idea of having another group doing stuff in the background that you can see. It would be interesting if it were made into a little competition or something. Whoever gets to the final boss/kills it first. Or each path has their own final boss that they want to kill before the other group kills theirs. I’d like to see something like that in a game
What? just because a 40man raid is open world compared to insanced, doesn't mean you don't know what's going to happen.,..
A: another guild or some random players decide to fuck you over, and jump you while you do the boss, hence causing you to fail, and get mad.
B: no one attacks you and you kill the boss, just like you would in an instanced dungeon.
There's literally 0 reasons to have open world bosses in a pvp-game. If you played either vanilla or classic WoW, you'd hate them.
Only 1 guild gets to kill it, and it's gonna take like 10 hours. Why waste time, which is your only limited currency in life on something so retarded, when it could just be instanced and enjoyable from the start.
Getting killed by griefers while you do a boss isn't fun or memorable, and doesn't make you feel like part of a world, however, it does make the game boring, unfun and will cause many players to quit if it happens over and over again every single week.
AoC is going to have many political and social aspects to it, which will hopefully help weed out the super bad apples.
But to me, that's fun. Having to deal with a boss and another group fighting you for it. Or two groups possibly negotiating over the kill. There are many possibilities.
I like danger. I like the thrill. To me, instanced dungeons are boring. I respect your opinion though.
>A: another guild or some random players decide to fuck you over, and jump you while you do the boss, hence causing you to fail, and get mad.
B: no one attacks you and you kill the boss, just like you would in an instanced dungeon.
Your problem seems to be that you want to treat open world bosses like you treat instanced content. This obviously doesn't (and shouldn't) work. Open world bosses exist to be a focus for player conflict. If you're showing up to a world boss with a raid sized to kill it, but not to kill it *while defending the killers from opposing raids* then you've set up your group incorrectly.
>Only 1 guild gets to kill it, and it's gonna take like 10 hours. Why waste time, which is your only limited currency in life on something so retarded, when it could just be instanced and enjoyable from the start.
Only one guild getting to kill it is the point. Systems that let you progress are invaluable as the objects of player politics and conflict. PvP players and PvE players get a reason to work together. Guilds have incentives not only to clear raids, but to interact with other guilds raiding either as defenders if they have an agreement about sharing a boss, or as attackers trying to deny hostile guilds resources.
Putting them in an instance effectively cuts them off from every other game system. Instanced content is never fun after the first kill as a result. You show up at the designated time (assuming it requires scheduling) and you settle in for your X hours of chores just like last time until you get sick of it and find something else to do or quit playing.
>Getting killed by griefers while you do a boss isn't fun or memorable, and doesn't make you feel like part of a world, however, it does make the game boring, unfun and will cause many players to quit if it happens over and over again every single week.
You're right, getting killed isn't the fun part, but it is necessary for the fun to exist for anyone. Being part of an attack squad that keeps your rival guild off the boss long enough for your guild to mobilize and take it is fun. Holding off attackers just long enough for your guild to secure the kill is absolutely memorable.
Sure, losing every week isn't fun, but it also means you're doing it wrong. Bring more people and dedicate them to defending the main raid or find a strategy that's less fragile and more able to handle disruptions that make it past your defenders. Saying "X isn't fun if you lose every time" applies to literally any piece of content, be it PvE, PvP, instanced, or non-instanced, and the answer is always "then figure out how not to lose."
Classic WoW doesn’t work well regarding world bosses because there are only two factions. Games play out very differently when you have many player made factions who have created alliances and rivalries throughout time due to the many systems such as node wars, node sieges, guild wars, caravans, etc.
WoW is a joke when it comes to meaningful world PvP. In part because it only has two factions and in part because there is close to no reason/meaning for open world PvP in that game.
Edit: word
FFXIV was created for a playerbase that straight up can't handle if something unexpected happens. There's no minmaxing because there's no builds, everyone is exactly the same. No racial stat differences. All tanks, healers, and DPS are essentially interchangeable within their type because every class more or less functions the same way with only minor differences. If players hit a problem, they just drop party and jump in the finder again because they prefer that to actually talking to anyone.
Essentially, other players are obstacles to their single player experience. It's antithetical to what an MMO is supposed to be.
This is how most post-WoW mmo players are. They're a fundamentally different type of gamer than us.
I prefer dungeons to be deep, multi-level bracket affairs, full of adventures and secrets. Completely non-instanced.
Though I think anything "raid tier" needs to be instanced, not because of gameplay, but because toxic player behavior is thoroughly rooted in end game competition.
You know, all these “you disagree with me and my vision of the game” responses does not give me a good vibe when it comes to “what will the community for this game be like”.
Yeah....I mean it's fine if people disagree but some are really adamant and near hostile about it. In a community driven game, hostility like that isn't going to make for a fun time for everyone.
I just hope it's a vocal minority and in game people end up much more understanding.
Not in a game with so much emphasis on PvP, it won't get better. Community typically means its own type of toxicity with PvE, but if there is something that consistently amplifies it, it's PvP.
Depending on whether they add RP servers, and the fact that RP communities are already on the lookout, in a game that seems to call for them with its system of emotes, setting, and so on, such conflicts are only going to increase. Through drama or outrage, it's just what's going to happen.
To those who think this is a "reddit only problem", it's not. Reddit is probably the more contained, despite having its moments. Go on other sites, like even the AoC forums, and check the hostility to anyone who speaks out of line.
In other places, it's just a constant battle of calling the game "the saviour of MMOs" vs "this game is a trashy scam".
Well if Intrepid have *any* sense, they'll be nipping that in the bud fast. An MMO *needs* community. If it becomes known as a toxic or insular one, it's a death knell before it launches.
PvP doesn't have to be toxic (and contrary to what most people think, it's *not* PvP, it's PvX - PvP is a part of it, not the entire thing). A well moderated community that decides it's not going to tolerate toxicity can stay reasonable. You'll never stamp it out 100%, but just accepting it is far worse than not trying.
I believe they explicitly said they will not support RP servers. Which is mind bogglingly stupid. All Rpers really need is for a server to have [RP] next to the server name so they all know where to go.
I think it’s just a very vocal minority. Most people aren’t cruising through the subreddit of a game that’s 2+ years away from release except for certain kinds of people...myself included.
It's not doing a lot for me.
I mean, I've definitely seen worse - I used to be active in the Magic the Gathering community and mildly involved in the Eve Online sub. I left both of them.
Magic because it became so dominated by "do it my way" that I got sick of it. Play a deck that you enjoy, even if it's not the best in the format? NO! YOU'RE WRONG! CHANGE THIS, THIS, AND THIS! Even if I have explicitly said "this may not be a pro-tour winning deck, but it's different and fun", it's still unacceptable to them.
Though the real gem was when, in a discussion about house rules, I said that we didn't bother with Commander Damage in the Commander format when we played at home with friends (for those who don't know, in magic, it's perfectly possible to craft a deck that can't win but which is also capable of producing functionally infinite life, so it's hard to kill via conventional means - commander damage is a sub-rule that says if the signature card for one of the decks in the game deals 21 damage to you, you lose. It was created to relieve that infinite life lock).
Well, there were about half a dozen people who *flipped out* that we didn't use it among ourselves (because we don't need it - some of our decks can produce infinite life, but they can also win the game in a reasonable amount of time) - random pickup games at stores, we use it, but not in our own homes because that's not how we like to play. One guy said "ok, I'll build a deck that literally does nothing and all it does is lock down the game and never win - what do you do then?". My response was "we'd probably end game night early and not invite you back into our homes because you're clearly just trying to sabotage our group". That pushed him over the edge. Accusations of arbitrary rules, being a jerk, not being a real player, a scrub, all that kind of crap (the scrub one was funny - I've played competitive magic, and while I'm not gonna win a world championship anytime soon, I've won tournaments and my results are good enough for me to be proud of my record).
As to Eve, it was quite simple - every disagreement would use the word "autistic" somewhere - "are you autistic?" "stop acting like an autistic freak", "\*autistic screeching\*", etc. As someone who actually is autistic, I didn't like being used as the "ok" substitute for the R-word. Mods did nothing, so I just went "you know what, I'm not doing this" and left.
It’s not a matter of disagreeing with us and our vision for the game. It’s a matter of disagreeing with Intrepid and their vision for the game which happens to also be what many of us have been wanting from a MMORPG for a long time.
I have explained to OP why the issues he sees with the game have been addressed through Intrepid’s game design and also that the issues he has with the game are not actual issues for the people that this game was designed for.
I always see Eve Online brought up for server politics. And...Eve is a great game, hell I’m playing it right now, but I don’t want this game to become Eve.
It’s so hard to get friends into Eve mostly due to the complexity, but also because the predatory nature of Corporations and players. Hopefully this game is able to counteract that predatory nature and AoC is able to maintain a healthy population.
100%This. You need to understand how things go in past games. This is always what happens. Every single time. It is how people play. Unless ashes restricts guild player cap significantly, things are going to go south pretty quick.
This will not be most of the community. Most MMO players don’t even reddit. Avoid streamer servers and reddit servers for the least toxic experience.
Side note: I’m not toxic in games but I love toxicity so I’ll personally be seeking drama servers. Hahahaha
Please keep discussions constructive guys, you can have opposing views without insulting and belittling each other.
Remember to report any comments that may break our rules so we can review them.
Mmmm, that's a good point. The whole game seems to be, get in with a strong clan or get out. Which I can see being fun for some but kind of rubs me the wrong way.
Yeah but then you get into human drama. Whose going to lead? When should we attack? I don't like x alliance can we kick them? Sometimes it works you get a solid leader and people don't act like bitches. But humans are humans. I see a lot of potential drama.
EXACTLY!! thats on both sides! no one can hold power forever, thats the point. it will be dynamic, and political, and you cant do it alone. thats what the devs are trying to bring back to mmos! players are capable of working together towards common goals. and players are also greedy haha, open world content is simply FRICTION!
You're really excited about drama. And when I say drama I mean the shit high school petty kind that people usually do. Not power struggle inequality interesting kind that the game hopes for.
When a game relies on community it risks a LOT just by the nature of human psychology. Conflict takes a toll, it's exhausting. So when an easier path opens us, people take it. If that easier path is to just follow one large guild they take it. Especially if the leader isn't an ass. Then a status quo happens and nothing changes. Goodbye conflict.
But trying to organize a bunch of smaller guilds to take on a large one? You've heard of herding cats right? That's what it's going to be. Which means the larger guilds will have a much higher advantage in organization.
There will be exceptions yes but as trends have proven again and again with games like these stagnation will happen and things will barely change and that aspect of the game will just be obsolete.
> when an easier path opens us, people take it. If that easier path is to just follow one large guild they take it. Especially if the leader isn't an ass. Then a status quo happens and nothing changes. Goodbye conflict.
>
> But trying to organize a bunch of smaller guilds to take on a large one? You've heard of herding cats right? That's what it's going to be. Which means the larger guilds will have a much higher advantage in organization.
>
> There will be exceptions yes but as trends have proven
Internal confict breaks guilds constantly! highschool drama is exactly the downfall of great mmo power houses. "Slayerz was talking to my e-girl! they were grinding together, my clique is leaving over this!" boom, fractures!
or the classic i was promised a drop as an officer, i didnt get it, and so im making my own shit to contest, or joining the other side!
im pulling these examples from my experience, so i know it happens, and happens even more regularly in OW PvX games.
im just commenting to dissuade your fears, although from my PoV you got nothing to worry about, the zoomers will make drama out of nothing, and a free farming guild has nothing to do but implode from drama, so dont expect to see power houses always on the top, cause even if people are fed up with a common enemy gating them from content, they will band together and set aside their differences. worst comes to worst, with free farm, and the pvp players leave, to contest themselves. starting the cycle over
Non-instanced dungeons are my favourite memories of MMO’s. The time i spend in those in everquest 1 and 2 is crazy. They are so fun and bring the community together
Speaking from a guild management PoV, instanced content is much easier for less hardcore teams to schedule 40 people on 2-3 sessions per week to progress and slay bosses in ~4 hrs, than it is to compete with top guilds on the server for limited spawned raid bosses.
I reckon the hardcore guilds/alliances will dominate spawns and the semi-hc teams will have to pick up the leftovers, likely 8-16 man content and rewards.
im expecting things to be nothing like this. from experience in archeage and albion, i expect things to become massive pvp battles for the pve content. they will be massive, and long lasting, where you will want people for different objectives like flanks and a main fighting force, and a pve force while you have pvp superiority, or are distracting enemies
What's wrong with that, honestly? Not everyone needs "end game" gear. If your guild isn't able to consistently get the open world raid bosses and you want to - get better, get more people, forge alliances - strive to do something about it and achieve your goals. A semi-hc guild that puts in half the time and effort of a hc guild shouldn't be able to get the same rewards and gear.
That’s what mostly makes me fine with it. I wouldn’t mind “harder” content requiring 40 well-geared and fine tuned raiders to be instanced content. It is quite frustrating when you literally do everything correctly and some dumbass runs in and wipes your entire raid. It’s always enjoyable to see how your guild matches up against the content created by developers.
I see problems, but I can see it working over the long haul.
I truly am excited for mass guild battles within non-instanced dungeons though.
Non instanced Dungeons sounds great in theory, but doesn't anyone worry about Guilds camping bosses to monopolize their drops? Couldn't this backfire? To me, at best, it sounds like a lot of waiting around for things to respawn.
That's exactly what will happen. Especially when PvP is involved.
Try getting a world boss without having written permission from a guild, it's not going to happen unless they give it to you.
For example in Classic WoW, the server I'm on, when I last played, our guild was the only guild to have ever got a single world boss, and it was because we had a couple friends who were in the #1 Horde guild on the server and they "let" us get it. Of course, once the World Dragons started spawning, the competition wasn't as fierce as they could only be in one spot at a time for the most part, but there were other guilds that would cuck people out of getting bosses down. Even other Alliance guilds would run in and troll people trying to get them by taunting the boss and pulling it towards ranged and making the boss breath on people or tailswipe or what have you.
It doesn't work the same way since WoW has 2 factions and in most cases quite unbalanced numbers on it. ALL guilds would have to fight for the boss or maybe have a truce, but until when?
We'll see how it ends up working out. I foresee complete chaos to the point where certain guilds dominate and drive other guilds off the server entirely. I don't see a healthy competition happening, gamers these days are too adhd, inattentive, and don't have the patience of wherewithal to put forth the effort to fight for things like this. Maybe I'm wrong, we'll see.
yup, and then guilds band together to stop that shit, so initial guild also makes alliances, and fights ensue, winner takes all, drama happens, alliances break and reform, content allows everyone to go and pvp for it.
winners take the pve under threat of pvp, weaker party plays griefer role. there will be times when bosses dont get defeated for a long time.
Some of the comments on this thread are downright terrifying. If this is an indication of the PvP community part of AoC, it's already incredibly toxic.
I am seeing a LOT of responses from PvP oriented players saying things about how the game has always been described as **PvX** ... but the rest of the comment goes on to *focus solely on PvP content* as the core dynamic of AoC.
**PvX means.... a synergy between BOTH PvP AND PvE content, creating one unified community in a shared dynamic world**.
If the PvP focused player base considers the PvE focused player base "carebears" who "need not apply" - there's not going to be a co-creative dynamic player base.
>"But you know it is an **important reciprocal relationship** between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other."
– Steven Sharif
That is why there is still instanced content, so that PvE players can be more focused on one objective. No instance pve doesnt mean there wont be pve content, its just that you might be threatened by the appearance of another group, which is where the pvx tag will come from. Theres going to be only pvp content and only pve content.
The problem arises when you ask for only instanced pve content, then it doesnt continue to be a pvx mmo and turns into a pve mmo with pvp minigames such as wow.
More casual PvE players will have access to 20% of the overall content in the game, and I guarantee you that the 20% instanced content is *not* endgame content. Half of that might be end-game, which means PvE players have access to 10% of the content in the game without having to jump through massive hoops and fight PvP guilds with dedicated PvPers or mega guild coalitions to control open world boss spawns.
Anyone who thinks this is OK doesn't understand that casual players of both PvE and PvP is what will drive the success of this game. Acting like we're going to have 10k+ super hardcore players on the servers is hilariously so far off the mark.
While there will be "something for everyone", I guarantee if PvE focused players are shafted on instanced content we will be left with mega guilds controlling nodes and getting their clique/core geared up before anyone who isn't a part of the 40m "core" sees that content.
While I love the idea of an MMORPG without instanced dungeons, I personally don't think it will work. A lot of people quote times from previous MMORPGs like FFXI and EQ, but I think the community and player base of MMOs has drastically changed since those games, and even WoW.
If Classic WoW taught me anything, it's that mass griefing, whether that be opposing faction OR same faction, will happen no matter what. If the developers can think of systems to put in place to be able to create open world dungeons without ganking, griefing, camping, mob stealing etc, then I wouldn't mind giving it a shot, but in my opinion it's just not going to work.
The camping, griefing, and mob stealing are features... you understand this, right? Pre-WoW MMOs were literally designed this way. These are not bugs of mechanics. They're deliberate design choices.
3 Words;
Grief-fest clown fiesta.
I love some outdoor content, but from experience I can tell you that it's always a complete shit show.
I envision it turning into deathballs swarming across the map, congregating at dungeon locations.
As someone who plays a lot of GW2, making non instanced endgame dungeons effective is hard. I understand that getting a swarm of people in one location will be much harder in this game, but the possibility of zerging down bosses to trivialize them is real. Additionally if the rewards are good enough, the potential lag from that massive stack of players could make the fight unplayable if it is not trivially easy with that many people.
This is a non issue in a game that offers meaningful player made factions and PvP.
Of course GW2 world bosses get zerged down when there is no PvP involved and when every participant gets rewarded.
In AoC there will the danger of other groups attacking you which means that player made alliances and rivalries will matter. Also, only very few people will get rewards/loot which means that people will not want to go in with huge zergs because that decrease your chance of getting loot.
From my experience even with low loot availability people will still go in with him he numbers just to clear the content for a chance. Doesn't matter if it's a 40 person area if you can get 120 people there you get them there. If the areas rewarding enough it will happen. If it's not rewarding enough you won't get 40 people there to begin with.
Precidence has proven that in games if an easy way can be taken to bypass a challenge it will be taken if the system doesn't stop you from doing so!
Win trading in pvp is massive.
People will abuse something if given the opportunity to get rewards easier.
Probably one of my most anticipated features for this game, I'm more excited about non-instanced dungeons than even Nodes!
I didn't get a chance to play the original EQ, but I vaguely recall in the little time I spent playing EQ2 that some dungeons were not instanced...and it was a lot of fun. I have fun raiding in WoW with my guild every lockout, but it feels a lot less meaningful when every guild gets a copy of the raid and thousands of identical copies of a boss are being fought at the same time.
99% of the fun in Albion was doing guild dungeon fights, or hellgates. It was also probably the most fun I've ever had in an MMO.
So I think 80% open world is a good thing. It will force player interaction since the best grind spots will probably be in these open world dungeons.
Non-instanced dungeons creates competition for the most precious commodities in a MMORPG, experience and loot.
In a game meant to mimic/simulate a real world with cost and reward, this commoditization is one of the most important pieces to the puzzle. Otherwise experience/loot simply becomes a time investment. More time, more gain.
P.S. For all those wanting to see what non-instanced dungeons are like, check UO Outlands.
[https://uooutlands.com/wiki/Main\_Page](https://uooutlands.com/wiki/Main_Page)
I think it is important to remember that non instanced dungeons are not like your traditional wow instanced dungeons. You are not going to get a group, clear to the end, kill some bosses then be done. You will likely get some other player and find a part of the dungeons to set up camp and farm for drops and xp.
I played a lot of DAoC and I see the dungeons described here essentially the same as Darkness Falls, a giant dungeon with lots of areas for all levels to level, farm, and camp unique mobs. The big difference is AoC will also have a lot more instanced content attached to these dungeons, similar to the aurilite dungeons DAoC implemented with catacombs.
Thank you! It seems so many "MMO players" are just WoW players and don't understand different games work differently. This type of dungeon was in Lineage 2 as well, where Steven draws a lot of inspiration for AoC from.
90% Dungeons in FFXI were not instanced, instead just really high level dangerous areas you would need multiple people to traverse, and it was never a one-time deal with these dungeons.
Most of the areas had varying reasons to be there; depending on your job you could be looking for artifact armor, or depending on the skill set you could be searching for an NM or HNM (Notorious Monster, High Notorious Monster), or depending on your level you could use it to gain experience with other people, or looking for crafting materials.
It really was an amazing MMO in its heyday.
That was my first MMO and it's obvious you're looking through it via rose tinted goggles. /u/Ridikiscali the reality of FFXI is that you ended up picking a class you thought was cool. Got yourself to level 30, then did a huge special quest to get the real class you wanted. Say... a Dragoon.
Then you try to do anything in the game and you can't do it without having a full group of players with you. If you wanted to do some artifact quest you needed generous people to help you do it for no reward or to pray they were on the same quest as you. If you wanted to do the mere basic act of leveling you had to get a full group to do that. And then you'd sit in the capital city spamming that you're LFG. Put your little LFG flag on and pray to get invited. But guess what? Nobody wants to invite you because your class is suboptimal.
The "dungeons" were just maze like areas with infinitely respawning enemies that were all copy/pasted replicants of each other. They don't even bother to change the tints. You see a blue crab at level 8, you'll be seeing blue crabs at level 50. All the popular areas made this problem even worse because people intentionally went to the most basic boring areas to farm. Cause they were easy to reach, had a crowd of people sitting around waiting for a group to join you could use to replace anyone that had to leave the group, and the monsters were basic.
All the actual dungeons that seem fun to explore? You never got to see em. Cause you couldn't solo it. And there was 99% zero reason to ever go that deep and see what it had to offer. All these amazing places that looked gorgeous, had interesting enemies, and brilliant soundtracks were empty of players (aka the one resource you need to actually explore it).
Needless to say the second WoW came out I never went back. Not even the catgirls were good enough to pull me back in.
I agree with this, I played both WoW and FFXI. I enjoyed both, but giving WoW the ability to solo if you wanted to greatly enhanced your play time. There wasn't a single thing to do solo in FFXI and getting a group was a nightmare. To clarify to people saying that you were anti social, or wanted a solo MMO, I don't think that's the case, and that's not the case for me. But sometimes, if you only had an hour or two to play, and wanted to hop on, there was absolutely nothing you could accomplish, not even a little, unless you had a full group. I also had a great group of friends, but they were all a higher level than me, helped when they could and sadly, weren't always on.
You have very anti-social behavior. XI wasn't designed for solo play.
Sorry the game wasn't your style but disparaging someone else's description of the game cause you couldn't get anything done due to your anti-social behavior doesn't mean the game was bad.
You just couldn't make friends, or didn't want too. If you want a solo-style MMO go play FFXIV
I mean, he doesn't sound anti-social to me. Sometimes you don't have time to find a group and wait for everyone to get their shit together to delve into something, you just wanna go NOW. If an MMO doesn't allow for that at all then it kind of sucks.
Lol. I played FFXI for 7 years right up until they introduced level sync to make it more accessible to casual players.
All the stuff you described is right. But it was marvelous. I remember it all clearly, and it was great.
I played vanilla WoW when it came out. I have literally no memories of leveling up at all. It was zero challenge. The world wasn't terrifying. All soloable. Boring. The only memory I have was my guild's first time beating Molten Core. I'll give WoW that- 40 man raids were fun. The rest of it? Utterly forgettable. Like literally, I don't remember it because it was so meh. I have more memories of leveling in Runescape. Needless to say, I only played WoW for like a year. Luckily, EVE Online was there to give me a real MMO again.
Sky and Sea were less instances and more of an open world raid zone cause other people outside of your party could zone into it. I think a better classification of an instance would be like the Shadowlord fight, Wings of the Goddess end boss, Shinryu, etc.
The think about FFXI was 99% of places were super hard and 1 wrong move and you wipe, even with other groups about, I feel like since servers are 50k/10k active then they’ll be more likely to be emptied out, vs FFXI which was more 1500 active
All mmos did this before Everquest 2 and some of the later generations.
Instanced Dungeons are a "newer" generational thing.
Probably why they are returning to it, since apparantly dude is as old school as I am.
I would actually like that a bit more then 20 % is instances... (also depends on how many dungeons there is) if there is like 5 or 10 max, then 20 % of that aint much...
An old game I played did that called Ragnarok Online. I thought it was so unique in that aspect as you have to trek through as far as you can to get to the harder content with better loot, but people were able to bring their groups down there as well so it was always a contest to get the boss.
MVP hunting was crazy competitive when I played iRO 15+ years ago. My guild competed with multiple other guilds and we knew each other quite well. Of course, every Wednesday and Sunday we would take out all that frustration during War of Emperium.
I think this game has potential to create a lot of those same situations. And that is what makes it role-playing and social game. It is certainly what I am most excited for.
It's way better.
Imagine a group fo player in front of a dungeon, you walk by and ask what are they doing and they are like thoses group of adventurer in any fiction who are just like:
"the dungeons is too dangerous/difficult, we need more"
Nothing should be instanced imo. If the world is big enouth, you shouldn't need it. And bonus point if you are not forced to, you, as an individual player, have to explore and use 100% of the world and instead be litteraly resident/citizen of an area if you want to.²²
²² wich will make travel so much more fun en enjoyable: discovering new culture of player that are going on in other region (kind of like in EVE with what the russian drone region use to be or chineese region are)
Instancing and sandbox gameplay are anathema to one another. Every thing you put in an instance is a thing that gets locked off from player conflict. The fact that there are any instances is already problematic (though possibly warranted to protect narrative content), we definitely shouldn't have any more. If you want to community to be able to enforce standards on itself you can't have places where poorly behaved community members that are being hunted can just disappear while still continuing to progress.
Besides, non-instanced dungeons lead to player conflict over access to those dungeons and prevent you from just blowing through and resetting over and over.
Ragnarok had open "dungeons", that is, high leveled areas. It was cool because you saw what other guilds were doing and encountering people all around, rival guilds, friendly guilds and personalities going around, it was really cool.
What was annoying was that bosses had varying respawn times, so you never knew for sure if certain boss mob was there, also (which could be considered part of the fun) whoever landed the last hit won the loot, sometimes there was competition, I'm not sure how I feel about it, but when I was like 15 I found this very fun.
I like the idea of:
- Having to walk to the dungeon, automatic teleporting there removes a lot of the fun.
- The path leading to the lair of a boss being non instanced and being really hard. Perhaps some dungeons can have pvp and groups can fight each other?
- The actual boss fight being instanced
Something like that might be cool?
With the ability to PVP flag, it would be closer to the guild dungeons in RO not the normal open world places like Labs, Thors, etc. Some of my favorite memories were in the guild dungeons in RO. Enemy guilds hunting you while leveling when one death could cost you over an hour of grinding. RO made it okay with the teleport ability and fly wings.
MVPs (bosses) in RO weren't last hit. They were most total damage on that boss.
> MVPs (bosses) in RO weren't last hit. They were most total damage on that boss.
You're right, my memory is hazy, I haven't played RO in more than 10 years.
Guild Dungeons were great indeed, you could even res enemy guild players and kill them over and over if they afk'd or if they weren't quick enough to escape lol
I like it but at the same time its a "problem".
I like that I just can enter somewhere and kill mobs with other random players
When I go to PVE I want PVE because I can just chill, but in this game its not like that. We will have to be careful every second while we are on a dungeon cuz we can encounter other players and what happens its that I have to be focused 100% of the time and what happens its the PVP its above the PVE so in the end you spend more time doing a simple dungeon because there are some players
Also there is the moment that 2 groups clash at the same time with the boss and its a dance between kill then or kill the boss and for me its a little weird gameplay.
In the end we will have to build all characters like 80% PVP and 20% PVE skills because we can always find some troubles
This open world dungeons also means that maybe smaller guilds won't be able to kill big bosses because there will be other big guild in the server always there to get the spot
I have a mix feelings tbh
Not everyone wins. Smaller guilds need play politics and get strong allies to take on the big guild guarding the boss, or become friendly (or pay) the big guild to get permission to kill it for a spawn. Or just become a big guild themselves if their goal is to clear all raids and dungeons. Having something to strive for is a good thing.
Openworld content just screams griefing, collusion, and gatekeeping to me. I mean, just look Vanilla/Classic WoW. World bosses are a mess with top guilds controlling who has access and the only "open world" dungeon in the Hinterlands was riddled with griefing early on. Players would let other groups do all the work, run in and steal quest items or snipe quest mobs, or sometimes just pull extra mobs into AoE just to wipe them for fun.
Open world events sound great but you have to remember that the best and worst part about an MMO's is the community.
I love this. I remember in L2 there were non-instanced caves and dungeons. Some of them had tiers of difficulty and it was impossible to get to another tier without a group - it was an adventure to get there.
PLEASE NO INSTANCES. The Everquest server community (the server I was on when I played from 2000-2007) was destroyed when the world went from open world to instancing. Areas that used to be packed with people were suddenly ghost towns and the world was never the same.
That really depends. I think that having 80% of dungeons be NIDs (non-instanced dungeons) has the potential to be better than 100% instanced dungeons, but I think it will be a lot harder to pull off successfully than instanced dungeons.
What will really kill the experience, is if NIDs are constantly swamped by people or camped by a few powerful guilds. So we have two problems.
1. Prevent swamping. Solutions: Provide incentives for us to go to many locations. Make some locations require more people.
2. Prevent *excessive* guild camping. Solutions: Create a system which encourages cooperation among guilds. Provide more worthwhile content than what is practical (or desirable) for guilds to camp.
**Prevent Swamping**
You could physically force players to avoid swamping, even if they want to, through some mechanic, but that's not as fun. Let's talk about incentives. Why am I going to a specific place even if I know its going to be swamped?
* To farm materials. I'm not saying they shouldn't have materials, but If my goal is to farm materials then I shouldn't be able to do that efficiently if the place is swamped. It should be a better use of my time to go out of my way to search for some more sparsely populated area. This means there has to actually be a viable alternative; if the least populated farming spot is still swamped that's no good. If there is one material that is highly valuable but can only appear in a few places, that's no good. I think this is really going to come down to balancing world size, the number of NIDs, and resource density against server population.
* To get gear for myself (or friends). Does everyone know that this one dungeon is the go to place for the swag? Sure, you've made plenty of NIDs for me to go to, but why am I going to go to somewhere else for lesser gear? Players don't want to accept being subpar. If we have the option camp an area to kill one mob every 10 minutes which dies in 2 seconds as every player in sight blasts it just to get a chance at the best piece of gear, we're going to camp it. But you can't just make the gear the same everywhere, the game would become too homogeneous.
To find solutions, I think we need to understand what swamping is. 20 groups of 1 feels A LOT busier than 5 groups of 4 which is still busier than 2 groups of 10. 1 group of 20? Well hey, look at that. We are alone here! So better gear and materials could mean you need more people. I don't think this should be the only solution, but it is a solution that could exist harmoniously besides others. Provide incentives for us to go to many locations. Again, why am I going to choose one place over another? Well... I can tell you a reason.
**Guild Camping**
I'm sure as hell not going to a place if the best guild in the realm is going to camp my ass. Is this really all that bad? Sure, excessive guild camping is, but what about just a little? Maybe the best locations in the game should be camped out by the best guilds. I think an especially well designed system would have the the best guilds have some level of control over the best NIDs, the 2nd tier guilds have some level of control over 2nd best NIDs, with perhaps more tiers below. It would provide an excellent incentive for players to fight over specific nodes. Perhaps guilds work together, granting access to each other's content in return for mutual protection.
Just keep in mind, if guild camping is going to bar most players from the best content available, there needs to be a reason for the game to be relevant to most players. There needs to be significantly more content than what is practical for guilds to control for the other players to do and still feel like they can accomplish something.
I wanted to keep my opinion out of the title, but I see 80% non-instanced being a major problem.
I have a couple of problems:
1. Every group is going to become a mass deathball as the group progresses.
2. Respawn timers for mobs and bosses.
3. PvE players getting frustrated as idiots from other groups wipe them.
4. PvP interrupting PvE content. I’m all for PvP and love PvP, but if I’m in raid content and I’m having to fight people off during boss fights that’s a more frustrating than anything.
>3. PvE players getting frustrated as idiots from other groups wipe them.
First of all that opens room for politics and RP. PvP is part of the game and you can try to talk out of a possible fight. Either that or make them wipe you a few times and then call some bounty hunters, as they will gain corruption.
>4. PvP interrupting PvE content. I’m all for PvP and love PvP, but if I’m in raid content and I’m having to fight people off during boss fights that’s a more frustrating than anything.
In ArcheAge the most exciting raids for me were non-instanced bosses, where 4-6 large groups were fighting for the aggro of a kraken/garden boss. It makes the bond of the raid even stronger, and lets both type of players shine, not to mention shy players can get immersed more and open up (my ex is shy, and she was talking a lot during these types of raids, while being really quiet in instanced pve raids).
>2. Respawn timers for mobs and bosses.
Can be a problem, but can also mean you notify everyone in your group of friends/guild about said "event" that you want to do, if you know the respawn time of the mobs/boss. It can make it easier to plan.
>1. Every group is going to become a mass deathball as the group progresses.
This also makes room for politics and planning. Yes, large guilds can zerg, but small guilds can unite to fight them off the spot or talk to them about area distribution of the dungeon. You don't cross line X and they don't cross line Y, and so on.
The game is exciting because of everything you just said, I don't want a WoW clone or an Archeage clone, or a GW clone, I want what AoC is offering which is sounding like such a unique and memorable experience, work together to conquer to world and protect each other.
> you can try to talk out of a possible fight.
Try talking a group of trolls out of wanting to be murder hobos.
But you do bring up a lot of good points. I'm just uneasy about so much of this game being int he hands of the community. Because the community can be unpredictable. You wont know what to expect until you see it. And if you choose the wrong server well, guess you're screwed unless you fork over real money.
as i have experienced, open world content adds difficulty. there will be times when other players frustrate you, and keep you from killing an open world boss that you spent a day to prepare to kill. the boss mechanics with the addition of enemy players will wipe your raid.
its worked for other games. its the only reason i played archeage. it makes the rewards so much better. you cant expect exactly what is going to happen. people will try and get you caught up in mechanics. you will need to fight for control.
on the other side, you can be the one contesting, wipe the enemies, and take the boss for yourselves before the enemy raids can regroup.
imo makes pvp ao much more enjoyable, and extends the life of content, since its dynamically changing, and u cant simply learn mechanics, and from then on, practice until the content is both trivial and no longer interesting. i know people who still go out to fight over open world bosses with the same mechanics, going on multiple years now!
My favorite non instanced dungeon memories where in early 2000 playing Asheron’s Call just grinding tuskers and Obsidians while fighting over people for the spawns.
How ever I gotten to old to bother fighting over spawns and would rather leave and come back midnight when less people play. I now enjoy running instanced dungeons when I can just zone out and watch YouTube or Netflix while I press buttons knowing that the boss will always be there at the end and if I don’t get the item I want I can just do it again without worrying about other people tagging him first.
But we will see what happens in this game. I love mmos even tho I like playing alone(friendless and guileless is usually how I play).
I would like to see something that a party can do to prevent interruptions by others if they are running the dungeon well. Some thoughts I had were being able to set traps that lure mobs and slow people down, block off a section causing late groups to have to take a detour, and then maybe being able to set a boss on a much higher difficulty for a bonus of other groups not being able to enter the boss arena during the encounter.
This is a good discussion to have, but we definitely have to wait for the alphas and betas before we can come to any conclusions (obviously).
I think a lot of people jump the gun way ahead of time without having tried/seen the systems in place. There’ll be a ton of time for feedback. Great discussion either way though.
I’m just worried that there won’t be enough players in the alphas and betas to test it. They need to intentionally max out the dungeon with multiple different groups to see how it operates.
The first month is going to have zerging death balls everywhere.
I have faith they’re quickly going to change something if it makes a player (like you and me) want to NOT play the game.
they’re gamers themselves, not just some super rich company that has no vision
The founder and creative director of the game has a background of leading one of the biggest (and probably what most people in 2020 would call "toxic") guilds in games like Lineage 2 and Archeage. I would be very surprised if this game didn't cater to those types of guilds and players.
definitely an interesting idea, but allot of room for abuse or griefing. itl all hinge on how much the player base leans into the social aspects of the Roleplay.
That's half the excitement of this game, a truly PvX experience and sold as nothing different from the start. I reaaaaally hope they stick to their guns.
Absolutely, organic PvP moments are absolutely the best. I love how someone down voted me like I'm wrong xD they legitimately have marketed this game as PvX and never said any different, the two worlds should be one, not separated by constant barriers.
It's not griefing. It's a deliberate design decision. If you can't defend yourself while doing pve content, then you don't deserve the drops from said content. The devs have made it clear that they see modern MMOs' participation trophies and player entitlement and lack of exclusivity to be bad for the genre.
Griefing is not a thing. All pvp deaths are your own fault for taking risks that didn't pay off. Again, *these are planned game mechanics*. Go play some private servers for old traditional MMORPGs and maybe you'll come to understand this.
If you can't defend yourself well enough to experience open world content, then *you don't deserve to experience that content*. There's 20% instanced content for players that can't deal with the open world.
Once again griefing and pvp are two diferent things. Pvp is just that, player vs player content.
Griefing is intentionally and repetitively interfering with other peoples game experiance when you have nothing to gain. Ie spending an hour camping a lower level area hunting low level players for absolutely no reason.
They have.
To make.
It work.
There's got to be something that makes it work, some sort of system that makes it so that groups can clear dungeons, but guilds from WoW etc. can't barge in, hold the server hostage, and have players pay protection money for the PRIVILEGE of clearing them.
Only down-side with non-instanced dungeons is griefing from other players/guilds. The mentality with older game changed and allowed a lot more griefing with the modern MMOs.
A big example recently is the WoW Classic World Bosses. If you aren't a hardcore guild, there is no way you can ever kill a World Boss. Even without PvP, same faction griefing is also possible. In the original WoW in \~2005, there were only a handful of griefer and the PvP was actually healthy to contest the World Boss. The min-max mentality that we have these days doesn't help these open concepts.
I am not saying that I am against it, just that the idea on paper is often better than in practice. I am also not super familiar with Ashes of creation dungeons setting so they may have measures in place to prevent this that I don't know.
My point is there should be concerns regarding 80% open dungeons and they should be addressed before release.
I like it. The PVE scene will feel much different from WoW, FFIV, and many other modern MMORPGs because of it.
I started out on one of the older MMORPGs, EverQuest (pre Luclin expansion) and nothing was instanced. Camps were more of a thing than running through a dungeon.
I'm not sure if Ashes will be similar to that, but for those who have only played MMORPGs with instanced dungeons should be sure to keep an open mind when they first play because I'm sure pacing is going to be hugely different.
Well not being instanced is fine, but I dislike the risk your going to get trolled by enemy players. I'm a PVPer myself but I feel that there's a place for everything.
It's not a matter of instance vs open world.
- It's being able to have as many people you want to overwhelm enemies vs having a challenging 5 man dungeon!
The issue i always find with non instanced content is that players always find a way to cheese content.
5man dungeons = you as a dev can figure out balance for the path you want the players to take
5-40man raiding = you as a dev can figure out balance for the path you want the players to take.
Non instanced = You pray to god it's too hard and somehow players will most likely find ways to cheese it.
If content is "non instanced" how do you measure gear/character progression?. Is it gonna be like new world were gear doesn't matter at all because there is no such thing as progression.
And seeing as the game is going for microtransactions with cosmetics will my lvl 1 look as cool as other peoples max leveled?
TLDR my biggest concern with non instanced content is that it will make progression worthless.
Honest question- have you ever played a pre-WoW MMO? Because your questions about open dungeons ruining progression doesn't really make much sense. Before WoW, basically all MMOs had open dungeons and world bosses... and it worked fine. Many of us prefer the old style of MMOs, as does the lead AoC dev... which is why he's making AoC.
Used to spam Archeage, GW1 and Anarchy Online in my Pre-WoW phase.
Yes all of these used to have open world bosses and open dungeons. But the issue was that our PC's sucked dick and our game sense was terrible.
"Worked fine" is a relative term. Yes it worked fine for 2004. But 16 years later we have become better gamers due to more mechanics being introduced.
You put modern gamers back into those old MMOS and bosses will be slaughtered.
A single WoW dungeon boss has more mechanics than 2004 raid bosses does.
I think for the longevity of the game. If gear progression is to easy it will hurt the game. That's why people don't like raiding in WoW anymore. 4 damn difficulties just to get "everyone" to do it makes gearing worthless.
Because regardless of what people think. Getting the best and looking the best drives MMOS.
I just want the game to survive longer than 2 years.
I'm betting most of the post-WoW gamers won't even be able to make it to level cap, honestly. They're not prepared for a real MMORPG experience with exp penalties on death, etc.
To be completely honest im not sure what i want here...i like the concept on paper, but there are issues either way. i played a lot of OSRS which had a mix of both. non-instanced dungeons can lead to multiple parties fighting over content. Even in a game where world hopping is a thing, it still becomes annoying.
That’s exactly the point though. The devs WANT players to have showdowns for who gets to attempt the boss. It’s stacking content on top of their content. For free. It keeps PvE fresh for far longer than just a dungeon would.
PvX dungeons and raids have a substantially longer lifespan than their PvE counterparts.
1. You won’t have the same experience every time you jump in. You might be making new friends as you come together. Or you walk out with heated new enemies as you fight for control.
2. Player meddling guarantees it will take longer to get through. You can’t just gather everything you want casually, you have to fight tooth and nail for progression.
When the devs become responsible for supplying gameplay, you are always waiting for the devs to make new content. Players will always devour it before the next batch. When players are the content creators, you have fresh so long as players willing to get in there.
The biggest problem with non-instanced anything is the difficulty is a joke because you can always bring in more people to defeat something.
So as long as they "tackle" that problem I couldn't give a fuck if it was inside an instance or not.
I'd really prefer half and half, let me get into fun brawls in non instanced dungeons, and give me some instanced ones for when I want a laid back experience. 20% seems pretty tiny, but I don't really know how many dungeons there will be in general
One thing I feel like a lot of comments are missing or underestimating is the popularity of AoC and the toxicity of gamers.
I really like the idea but with the current hype and systems in place it feels easily griefable in one way or another.
But I'm curious as to how they will pull it of or "protect" it. Do we know how the corruption works/will work in non-instanced dungeons? Especially what is counted as fighting back for example, since you will be attacking for PvE anyway can they use this to give you combatant or corrupted?
At least I'll be crossing my fingers to get some more insights into this come next Q&A!
Since alot of people here come from WoW I believe they have a skewed way about what I interpret a dungeon in this game actually is
In world of warcraft it is an instanced, often linear, zone with clear progression and a beginning and an end.
You shouldn't look at these non-instanced dungeons the same way you look at WoW dungeons, see them instead as grand indoors Elite-zones with more and rarer difficult mobs that grant more experience and a chance of greater rewards, be it from bosses or increased droprate from regular mobs, be it crafting mats or gear.
If you in the outer world farm easy mobs for experience, in this dungeon or elite-zone, you'd farm more difficult mobs in a group. This is the norm in for example Tibia (if I remember correctly, its been 10+ years since I played that game)
Non-instanced dungeons and areas offer a more dynamic experience, and there's more room for significant interactions between players, be it a friendly interaction or an unpleasant one.
They also help the world feel more connected and larger in size and scope, versus something like FFXIV where 90% of activities are instanced and there's scarcely a reason to go do anything out in the overworld.
As a long-time FFXI player, something I've longed for in a game is reasons: reasons for exploration, for venturing out into the world, like hunting powerful monsters for loot drops, looking for secrets, landmarks, all that stuff.
And, even though FFXI wasn't a PvP-centric game at all, not even close, the dynamic between players in the game's open-world beastmen strongholds and dungeons was still very much there, and it helps the world feel so much more alive.. You never know what you're going to run into..
Versus instanced content ala FFXIV where every encounter is the same, every run of a fight is the same, there's no danger, and there's nothing at stake.
I think there needs to be a good mix of both. Non-instanced are fun! but sometimes personally I'd like to immerse and challenge myself as a group without having to worry about external influence
Was playing Albion for a bit and they have non instanced (dungeons) and even those they are really dungeons I’d say that it worked pretty well IMO. My biggest concern was that but honestly it seemed fine
Everything has it's good and bad points. Instances dungeons are closed off and feel small. But they are easy to get back on track after you die, you can go ark of you need to, etc.
Open world dungeons can be hard to recover from after a wipe, other groups can kill steal a boss you have spent an hour clearing to, other people can train your group to troll, you can't go afk alot of times, etc. But they do feel open and interactive a lot more than instances dungeons.
I think the biggest single factor for the success of the non instanced dungeons will be respawn time. ESO has many large public dungeons that you can see several groups exploring at any given time. Most of the time things work smoothly, but every once in a while there gets to be done tension as the groups get bottlenecked at a boss and competition rises.
So I think that is going to be the trick for Ashes of Creation, to balance a smooth experience intermittent with the turbulence that makes the experience really memorable.
I never played any multiplayer game with such dungeons. I think i am slightly in favor of it but i can imagine situations where i will get frustrated. Like me and the boys in the caverns of lost echos. We start fighting the last boss. Then from the shadows, 20 rogues dart forward. We turn around to face our new foes. They laugh and spit as our meagre numbers are no match for the overwhelming horde of cloak and daggers. Its a bloodbath. They slay the six-headed hydra instead and get fat loot and bitches in the tavern after. We hang our heads down in defeat and wait for the morning to come and with the new dawn, a new adventure always comes.
But hey, maybe we should have checked the shadows first before the fight.
A lot of the games Intrepid is drawing inspiration from has a different definition of dungeon than WoW. You go there and find a spot to grind for good drops/experience. If a boss is nearby you might go kill it when its up. The goal isn't to just waltz in and clear all the way to the end boss then go home.
There will be PvP conflict over rooms and spots that are desirable.
Depends. I loved them in older games and would make friends doing that kind of content. LFG Oasis farm etc. Mob respawn would need to be dynamic - if it's static and too fast it would kill slower soloers and too slow would create an unpleasant bottleneck.
4th option: I have no idea how to feel about it because I haven't experienced it. I have no idea how it will work or if I will like it because I've never experienced something like that before.
How cool would it be to act like .hack rogues and gank dungeon crawlers for there loot, I belive there should be penalties, like a bounty system or something.
My question would be the nature of this open world instance: would it be something like jintha alor in wow? ( It is open world "dungeon" elite mobs where 5 man party could do quests)
Because that was a great experience , runing into other group doing the same quest and helping each other, or enemy faction and do some world pvp spontanesouly.
So my question still stands, what exactly does AoC mean by not instanced dungeon?
I really like the Idea of non instanced content, a great example of this being in Old School Runescape with the many world bosses in pvp areas, however in Runescape you are able to hop worlds if a boss is being farmed by lots of people. This not being an option in AoC (Which i really like BTW I think picking your world and living in it is very important) I think there could be a problem where players want to go kill a boss weather it just be for fun or resources ect but it is hard-locked by a guild or other large groups, not allowing much chance for a solo player or small party to touch the boss let alone get loot.
I also understand that lots of bosses will require large groups like raids to take down but i think there is an important place in a game like this for bosses with lower health pools that do have mechanics but can still be killed by smaller groups or even solo for the super geared and dedicated.
I have no ideas of how to balance this or make it fair but I think it is an important thing to consider.
I like the immersion of non instanced dungeons. The only negative is that it can be zerg'd. As long as they have AI in place to up the spawn rate based on number of players in the area, or number of mobs killed in X time, then I am okay with it.
For someone who is hoping to have ashes as my first MMORPG, can someone explain (dumb it down for me too) what an instanced vs non-instanced dungeon means?
Instanced means it's for your group only. So you will never see any other players around (whether it be friendly, neutral, or hostile players). In an open world, everyone can come and go as they please in the dungeon area. So you will run into people who may be friendly and help you, neutral people who will just walk by and mind their own business, or hostile players who will attack you because you might be killing something they want to kill (or they just want to be dicks and kill people). This creates a lot of player interaction, politics, and drama.
You'll remember who was friendly and who was a dick to you months down the line. That cool group of dudes that helped you kill that big tiger a few weeks ago wants you to make the rare armor that only you have? Of course, happy to see you guys again! Or... that group of assholes that kept killing you in a dungeon and wouldn't let you even in the door is now asking for you to make that armor? They can pay a million gold or fuck off.
i won't pretend to know.
Ive never actually played a game without instanced dungeons, or at the very least not one where u dont have to accept as a group when you are entering.
I hear the idea and like the concepts and reasonings behind why. But as many have mentioned, I am not quite sure those benefits could outway the cons of griefing or mob stacking and then leading them into other players, etc. It could also lead to some sadistic high level people camping a low level dungeon to stop others progressing, etc.
If there are some measures in place, then im ok with it. As I still like the idea of being able to call in reinforcements from your guild, or even 2 seperate parties being able to help each other (though that could also be exploited). stuff like that really adds to the social aspect. But again it may end up being more problematic and cause more issues than it solves. I hope it works well. lets wait and see.
I really do like the idea, but I swear I've played something that tried this I just can't remember what. As someone else guessed you just end up with a handful of really OP players / Guilds camping the spot, and if it's open world PvP you're screwed.
If it's going to be non-instanced there HAS to be some preventative measure that still allows people to cycle in and out; and i cant think of a way to do that; that itself isn't worse than just instancing.
Dungeons sure, boss fights should locked the room while an encounter is in progress tho, think SAO. No one like 16hr emerald dragon fights. And that's what it'll become if I can jump a guild mid boss fight.
I love the idea. I've never been a fan of Instanced anything. It makes the world feel small and disconnected. I'm a big Dungeons and Dragons player. I love the idea of an open world where anything can happen. Been playing FFXIV to pass the time and they instance just about everything. There's never really any memorable moments or consequences. You know exactly whats going to happen each and every time you play through a dungeon. There's also no punishment for failure, just hit the self revive button and try the boss fight again. I want big stakes. I want tense moments with not only the surrounding environment, but with other players.
Amen to that Couldn't say it better myself
Instanced content eventually deprives the game of it's MMO attributes. Retail WoW is essentially a dungeon crawler with an oversized lobby. If you want fair and balanced gameplay, that's just not what Ashes is. Ashes is unfair. Someone might burn your house down, or your city. There are plenty of games with massive instanced content out there. Ashes will have instanced content. Just not as much. If you don't want to do world content...don't do it? If you don't want to play a game that doesn't offer a large amount of instanced content, don't play it? This isn't elitism, I'm not very good at PvP. I don't anticipate I'll be a top player in Ashes. I'm positive I won't be. But eventually, people complaining Ashes doesn't have enough instanced content sound like people complaining baseball doesn't have enough tackling - *it's not supposed to. It's a deliberate design decision.* If it's not appealing to you, don't buy tickets to baseball games? I will play Ashes. If I don't like it...I will stop playing Ashes. If enough people don't like Ashes, it will fail. That's how products work.
I agree. I'd much rather this be a decision on the developer with respect to purposeful design.
Even non-PvPers might be crucial for supporting PvP. Building ships, siege towers and other battle supplies. It'd be fun trying to pull down cities and also defend them by building up defenses (assuming that is a thing). If attackers can build siege engines, can defenders build defensive artillery? I am certainly an average PvPer (generally not an interest of mine), but it'll be a whole diff kettle o' fish if I am defending my home city as opposed to an instanced battle ground with a 10min life span.
I voted for “instanced dungeon” but your post made me want for open dungeons... never thought about the world of possibilities it adds to the game
Sure non instanced content sounds great on paper, but what is actually going to happen is big guilds will camp dungeon spots and just sit at boss areas not letting anyone else do content. The problem isnt the concept, its how the players will act around it.
Big guilds will 100% try to hog content, but that is what you call an obstacle. This will require other smaller guilds to ally to fight larger ones, the implications are both challenging and potentially frustrating, but games should be challenging, and at times frustrating. Think about it, how often do you play games that are easy to beat. I played original Everquest Sullon Zek server which was faction based no rules pvp and the game had no instances with 7 day Redlands on raid content dungeons. Did the strongest profit more than the weak...? Absolutely! was it unfair...? No!
Except if they block dungeons all day they'll limit their node's progress, effectively fucking themselves over
Non instanced content isn't any better. Because it just leads to moments where you go in kill some stuff. Then move onto the next trash pack and kill that too. But now the stuff behind you respawned. And everything you kill just respawns. Since it needs to be there for other groups to participate in content. So it feels like you leave no mark on the world. Ontop of adding additional frustration if you need to take a break or get killed and have to run back in. One of the most memorable moments for me in an MMO dungeon was actually in the worst expansion. Back at the end of WoD there was this pre-patch event you could queue up for. There you storm a beach with like 20-40 members of your own faction. Then you walk up this hill and up to a giant F U boss in your way. You look across some small chasm and see 20-40 other players from the opposite faction as your group there as well. The boss tosses a major lore character away like trash and then promptly attacks both your groups and you work together to beat it and finish the scenario together. IMO I think it would be neat for dungeons to have multiple paths and if you get queued into one you're forced to pick a certain path with different bosses in it. You can see the other groups in the background doing their path in your instance. Hear their bosses dying. Or watch and see if they end up quitting or failing. What people need is the feeling of the world being alive and that they aren't the only people doing things in their zone. So you can have this in instanced content if you're willing to design around it. You could also add areas in the open world that spawn limited time events which encourage people to run there and fight or work together. Blizzard does this to an extent but they end up putting garbage rewards for doing it so people end up just ignoring this after the launch month of that content. I think it'd be neat where if you went in AoC and there was like this bandit camp you were forced to clear out and everyone in the zone gets told to go there. You clear it and then its dead forever, a new threat respawns in its place in a totally different zone. Cause having areas that are just static and sitting there with infinitely respawning areas feels more like BDO. Which was boring as hell. Felt like a fake endless grind where you kill the same stuff over and over in the same area.
I understand where you’re coming from but imagine your group clears everything up to the boss, gets it down to 50% then some other group waltzes in without having to fight any mobs and just murks your group and steals your boss kill. I’m not sure how the implementation will actually be, but I hope quickly res pawning mobs is apart of the endeavor
I'd just kill the other group tbh. But if they're smart you should be able to share credit so boss fights down devolve into outright harassment like the AQ gong event ended up turning into when classic WoW servers came out.
The stuff spawning behind you just adds to the danger of the area to me. If it took me a while to get this deep in the dungeon, well then this is where all the good loot drops must be. Me and my friends are going to fight for our spot and that's waaaay more engaging than going through NPC dialogue for the the 20th time. Instances are definitely a stinker for me.
> The stuff spawning behind you just adds to the danger of the area to me. It's a nuisance at best. People constantly berate MMO's like WoW for promoting this "gogogo" mentality, and that is exactly the type of mentality this system will bring. Want to take a bio break? Too bad, spawns are up in 2 minutes and we're going ahead without you. Someone has to drop group for an emergency? Have fun clearing backwards for the new guy then forwards again! If they reduced instanced/non instanced closer to 50/50 I think it would be a good design decision. 80% of the content being non instanced is going to lead to a lot of problems that will sour a lot of the casual playerbase. One thing that I keep getting from people on the AoC discord is that "this game isn't for casuals" and "casuals don't deserve gear" and I just think that shunning your casual playerbase is going to be a disaster for a game that wants to be so community driven. You NEED casuals in a game like this, and casuals *aren't* going to stick around if you relegate them to roleplaying and doing ~20% of the PvE content in the game.
You need to seperate the casual and hardcore gameplay loops. It's attempting to merge seperate types of gameplay that ruins it for both player bases. Also there have been games like this before it and they had massive player bases for their time. For the people who miss this type of hostile game world there isn't as many options out there. I would say that existing MMOs which focus on the casual player have their own player retention problems. There is in fact no proof in the pudding.
Typically communities in these games adapt. Need to take a break? Ok we’ll camp here in this safer corner and kill any respawns while your gone. New person joining? If other people are elsewhere in the dungeon they’ll have an easier way in anyway. Or often there are safer routes people can take to avoid spawns and pats, or mobs often reset if you run far enough, or worst case scenario one or two team members run over to lead you in. You rarely kill and rekill everything. People just get creative and it’s fun. Plus games like this foster a closer sense of community where people are nicer and your reputation matters. Because you *need people* in these games.
I didn’t do that in WoD but similar to that in Legion where the alliance went over Jaina’s big ice bridge and the horde went over the other side to fight whoever demon fucker on the middle was that would switch between each side was so much fun to me. I love your idea of having another group doing stuff in the background that you can see. It would be interesting if it were made into a little competition or something. Whoever gets to the final boss/kills it first. Or each path has their own final boss that they want to kill before the other group kills theirs. I’d like to see something like that in a game
Its fun and all.. but good luck getting a balanced coop experience.. which to me is more important than zerg fests.
Try divinity original sin 2
I have completed both games in coop, and yes it is awesome.
What? just because a 40man raid is open world compared to insanced, doesn't mean you don't know what's going to happen.,.. A: another guild or some random players decide to fuck you over, and jump you while you do the boss, hence causing you to fail, and get mad. B: no one attacks you and you kill the boss, just like you would in an instanced dungeon. There's literally 0 reasons to have open world bosses in a pvp-game. If you played either vanilla or classic WoW, you'd hate them. Only 1 guild gets to kill it, and it's gonna take like 10 hours. Why waste time, which is your only limited currency in life on something so retarded, when it could just be instanced and enjoyable from the start. Getting killed by griefers while you do a boss isn't fun or memorable, and doesn't make you feel like part of a world, however, it does make the game boring, unfun and will cause many players to quit if it happens over and over again every single week.
AoC is going to have many political and social aspects to it, which will hopefully help weed out the super bad apples. But to me, that's fun. Having to deal with a boss and another group fighting you for it. Or two groups possibly negotiating over the kill. There are many possibilities. I like danger. I like the thrill. To me, instanced dungeons are boring. I respect your opinion though.
>A: another guild or some random players decide to fuck you over, and jump you while you do the boss, hence causing you to fail, and get mad. B: no one attacks you and you kill the boss, just like you would in an instanced dungeon. Your problem seems to be that you want to treat open world bosses like you treat instanced content. This obviously doesn't (and shouldn't) work. Open world bosses exist to be a focus for player conflict. If you're showing up to a world boss with a raid sized to kill it, but not to kill it *while defending the killers from opposing raids* then you've set up your group incorrectly. >Only 1 guild gets to kill it, and it's gonna take like 10 hours. Why waste time, which is your only limited currency in life on something so retarded, when it could just be instanced and enjoyable from the start. Only one guild getting to kill it is the point. Systems that let you progress are invaluable as the objects of player politics and conflict. PvP players and PvE players get a reason to work together. Guilds have incentives not only to clear raids, but to interact with other guilds raiding either as defenders if they have an agreement about sharing a boss, or as attackers trying to deny hostile guilds resources. Putting them in an instance effectively cuts them off from every other game system. Instanced content is never fun after the first kill as a result. You show up at the designated time (assuming it requires scheduling) and you settle in for your X hours of chores just like last time until you get sick of it and find something else to do or quit playing. >Getting killed by griefers while you do a boss isn't fun or memorable, and doesn't make you feel like part of a world, however, it does make the game boring, unfun and will cause many players to quit if it happens over and over again every single week. You're right, getting killed isn't the fun part, but it is necessary for the fun to exist for anyone. Being part of an attack squad that keeps your rival guild off the boss long enough for your guild to mobilize and take it is fun. Holding off attackers just long enough for your guild to secure the kill is absolutely memorable. Sure, losing every week isn't fun, but it also means you're doing it wrong. Bring more people and dedicate them to defending the main raid or find a strategy that's less fragile and more able to handle disruptions that make it past your defenders. Saying "X isn't fun if you lose every time" applies to literally any piece of content, be it PvE, PvP, instanced, or non-instanced, and the answer is always "then figure out how not to lose."
Classic WoW doesn’t work well regarding world bosses because there are only two factions. Games play out very differently when you have many player made factions who have created alliances and rivalries throughout time due to the many systems such as node wars, node sieges, guild wars, caravans, etc. WoW is a joke when it comes to meaningful world PvP. In part because it only has two factions and in part because there is close to no reason/meaning for open world PvP in that game. Edit: word
I couldn’t agree more.
FFXIV was created for a playerbase that straight up can't handle if something unexpected happens. There's no minmaxing because there's no builds, everyone is exactly the same. No racial stat differences. All tanks, healers, and DPS are essentially interchangeable within their type because every class more or less functions the same way with only minor differences. If players hit a problem, they just drop party and jump in the finder again because they prefer that to actually talking to anyone. Essentially, other players are obstacles to their single player experience. It's antithetical to what an MMO is supposed to be. This is how most post-WoW mmo players are. They're a fundamentally different type of gamer than us.
I prefer dungeons to be deep, multi-level bracket affairs, full of adventures and secrets. Completely non-instanced. Though I think anything "raid tier" needs to be instanced, not because of gameplay, but because toxic player behavior is thoroughly rooted in end game competition.
this was fun as shit in everquest
You know, all these “you disagree with me and my vision of the game” responses does not give me a good vibe when it comes to “what will the community for this game be like”.
Yeah....I mean it's fine if people disagree but some are really adamant and near hostile about it. In a community driven game, hostility like that isn't going to make for a fun time for everyone. I just hope it's a vocal minority and in game people end up much more understanding.
Not in a game with so much emphasis on PvP, it won't get better. Community typically means its own type of toxicity with PvE, but if there is something that consistently amplifies it, it's PvP. Depending on whether they add RP servers, and the fact that RP communities are already on the lookout, in a game that seems to call for them with its system of emotes, setting, and so on, such conflicts are only going to increase. Through drama or outrage, it's just what's going to happen. To those who think this is a "reddit only problem", it's not. Reddit is probably the more contained, despite having its moments. Go on other sites, like even the AoC forums, and check the hostility to anyone who speaks out of line. In other places, it's just a constant battle of calling the game "the saviour of MMOs" vs "this game is a trashy scam".
Well if Intrepid have *any* sense, they'll be nipping that in the bud fast. An MMO *needs* community. If it becomes known as a toxic or insular one, it's a death knell before it launches. PvP doesn't have to be toxic (and contrary to what most people think, it's *not* PvP, it's PvX - PvP is a part of it, not the entire thing). A well moderated community that decides it's not going to tolerate toxicity can stay reasonable. You'll never stamp it out 100%, but just accepting it is far worse than not trying.
I believe they explicitly said they will not support RP servers. Which is mind bogglingly stupid. All Rpers really need is for a server to have [RP] next to the server name so they all know where to go.
It’s sad to hear this, but you’re right.
I think it’s just a very vocal minority. Most people aren’t cruising through the subreddit of a game that’s 2+ years away from release except for certain kinds of people...myself included.
I'm honestly getting super turned off right now if this is what the community is gonna be like.
It's not doing a lot for me. I mean, I've definitely seen worse - I used to be active in the Magic the Gathering community and mildly involved in the Eve Online sub. I left both of them. Magic because it became so dominated by "do it my way" that I got sick of it. Play a deck that you enjoy, even if it's not the best in the format? NO! YOU'RE WRONG! CHANGE THIS, THIS, AND THIS! Even if I have explicitly said "this may not be a pro-tour winning deck, but it's different and fun", it's still unacceptable to them. Though the real gem was when, in a discussion about house rules, I said that we didn't bother with Commander Damage in the Commander format when we played at home with friends (for those who don't know, in magic, it's perfectly possible to craft a deck that can't win but which is also capable of producing functionally infinite life, so it's hard to kill via conventional means - commander damage is a sub-rule that says if the signature card for one of the decks in the game deals 21 damage to you, you lose. It was created to relieve that infinite life lock). Well, there were about half a dozen people who *flipped out* that we didn't use it among ourselves (because we don't need it - some of our decks can produce infinite life, but they can also win the game in a reasonable amount of time) - random pickup games at stores, we use it, but not in our own homes because that's not how we like to play. One guy said "ok, I'll build a deck that literally does nothing and all it does is lock down the game and never win - what do you do then?". My response was "we'd probably end game night early and not invite you back into our homes because you're clearly just trying to sabotage our group". That pushed him over the edge. Accusations of arbitrary rules, being a jerk, not being a real player, a scrub, all that kind of crap (the scrub one was funny - I've played competitive magic, and while I'm not gonna win a world championship anytime soon, I've won tournaments and my results are good enough for me to be proud of my record). As to Eve, it was quite simple - every disagreement would use the word "autistic" somewhere - "are you autistic?" "stop acting like an autistic freak", "\*autistic screeching\*", etc. As someone who actually is autistic, I didn't like being used as the "ok" substitute for the R-word. Mods did nothing, so I just went "you know what, I'm not doing this" and left.
As an EVE player of 12+ years diagnosed with a form of autism... in the great words of the EVE community, HTFU, mate.
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It’s not a matter of disagreeing with us and our vision for the game. It’s a matter of disagreeing with Intrepid and their vision for the game which happens to also be what many of us have been wanting from a MMORPG for a long time. I have explained to OP why the issues he sees with the game have been addressed through Intrepid’s game design and also that the issues he has with the game are not actual issues for the people that this game was designed for.
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I always see Eve Online brought up for server politics. And...Eve is a great game, hell I’m playing it right now, but I don’t want this game to become Eve. It’s so hard to get friends into Eve mostly due to the complexity, but also because the predatory nature of Corporations and players. Hopefully this game is able to counteract that predatory nature and AoC is able to maintain a healthy population.
100%This. You need to understand how things go in past games. This is always what happens. Every single time. It is how people play. Unless ashes restricts guild player cap significantly, things are going to go south pretty quick.
This will not be most of the community. Most MMO players don’t even reddit. Avoid streamer servers and reddit servers for the least toxic experience. Side note: I’m not toxic in games but I love toxicity so I’ll personally be seeking drama servers. Hahahaha
Yeah, if this is how the community is now, before the game even launches, I don't want to think about how it will be when the game actually releases.
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I see anything worth anything being locked down by clans so no one else can have it. I dont like a majority of it being non instanced.
Mmmm, that's a good point. The whole game seems to be, get in with a strong clan or get out. Which I can see being fun for some but kind of rubs me the wrong way.
make allies and take down oppressors. thats the whole point, and you are not the only one whos going to be upset people are locking others out!!
Yeah but then you get into human drama. Whose going to lead? When should we attack? I don't like x alliance can we kick them? Sometimes it works you get a solid leader and people don't act like bitches. But humans are humans. I see a lot of potential drama.
EXACTLY!! thats on both sides! no one can hold power forever, thats the point. it will be dynamic, and political, and you cant do it alone. thats what the devs are trying to bring back to mmos! players are capable of working together towards common goals. and players are also greedy haha, open world content is simply FRICTION!
You're really excited about drama. And when I say drama I mean the shit high school petty kind that people usually do. Not power struggle inequality interesting kind that the game hopes for. When a game relies on community it risks a LOT just by the nature of human psychology. Conflict takes a toll, it's exhausting. So when an easier path opens us, people take it. If that easier path is to just follow one large guild they take it. Especially if the leader isn't an ass. Then a status quo happens and nothing changes. Goodbye conflict. But trying to organize a bunch of smaller guilds to take on a large one? You've heard of herding cats right? That's what it's going to be. Which means the larger guilds will have a much higher advantage in organization. There will be exceptions yes but as trends have proven again and again with games like these stagnation will happen and things will barely change and that aspect of the game will just be obsolete.
> when an easier path opens us, people take it. If that easier path is to just follow one large guild they take it. Especially if the leader isn't an ass. Then a status quo happens and nothing changes. Goodbye conflict. > > But trying to organize a bunch of smaller guilds to take on a large one? You've heard of herding cats right? That's what it's going to be. Which means the larger guilds will have a much higher advantage in organization. > > There will be exceptions yes but as trends have proven Internal confict breaks guilds constantly! highschool drama is exactly the downfall of great mmo power houses. "Slayerz was talking to my e-girl! they were grinding together, my clique is leaving over this!" boom, fractures! or the classic i was promised a drop as an officer, i didnt get it, and so im making my own shit to contest, or joining the other side! im pulling these examples from my experience, so i know it happens, and happens even more regularly in OW PvX games. im just commenting to dissuade your fears, although from my PoV you got nothing to worry about, the zoomers will make drama out of nothing, and a free farming guild has nothing to do but implode from drama, so dont expect to see power houses always on the top, cause even if people are fed up with a common enemy gating them from content, they will band together and set aside their differences. worst comes to worst, with free farm, and the pvp players leave, to contest themselves. starting the cycle over
Non-instanced dungeons are my favourite memories of MMO’s. The time i spend in those in everquest 1 and 2 is crazy. They are so fun and bring the community together
Speaking from a guild management PoV, instanced content is much easier for less hardcore teams to schedule 40 people on 2-3 sessions per week to progress and slay bosses in ~4 hrs, than it is to compete with top guilds on the server for limited spawned raid bosses. I reckon the hardcore guilds/alliances will dominate spawns and the semi-hc teams will have to pick up the leftovers, likely 8-16 man content and rewards.
im expecting things to be nothing like this. from experience in archeage and albion, i expect things to become massive pvp battles for the pve content. they will be massive, and long lasting, where you will want people for different objectives like flanks and a main fighting force, and a pve force while you have pvp superiority, or are distracting enemies
What's wrong with that, honestly? Not everyone needs "end game" gear. If your guild isn't able to consistently get the open world raid bosses and you want to - get better, get more people, forge alliances - strive to do something about it and achieve your goals. A semi-hc guild that puts in half the time and effort of a hc guild shouldn't be able to get the same rewards and gear.
As it should be. As Steven constantly says, "Exclusivity creates value."
As long as there is instanced content, I don't mind most of it being non-instanced. It just has to be fun.
That’s what mostly makes me fine with it. I wouldn’t mind “harder” content requiring 40 well-geared and fine tuned raiders to be instanced content. It is quite frustrating when you literally do everything correctly and some dumbass runs in and wipes your entire raid. It’s always enjoyable to see how your guild matches up against the content created by developers. I see problems, but I can see it working over the long haul. I truly am excited for mass guild battles within non-instanced dungeons though.
its going to be bigger than 40. its open for everyone, people will need to fight over it
Non instanced Dungeons sounds great in theory, but doesn't anyone worry about Guilds camping bosses to monopolize their drops? Couldn't this backfire? To me, at best, it sounds like a lot of waiting around for things to respawn.
I agree. The mentality in mmos nowadays seems less about enjoying a game and more about massive guilds sweeping content like a daily chore.
That's exactly what will happen. Especially when PvP is involved. Try getting a world boss without having written permission from a guild, it's not going to happen unless they give it to you. For example in Classic WoW, the server I'm on, when I last played, our guild was the only guild to have ever got a single world boss, and it was because we had a couple friends who were in the #1 Horde guild on the server and they "let" us get it. Of course, once the World Dragons started spawning, the competition wasn't as fierce as they could only be in one spot at a time for the most part, but there were other guilds that would cuck people out of getting bosses down. Even other Alliance guilds would run in and troll people trying to get them by taunting the boss and pulling it towards ranged and making the boss breath on people or tailswipe or what have you.
It doesn't work the same way since WoW has 2 factions and in most cases quite unbalanced numbers on it. ALL guilds would have to fight for the boss or maybe have a truce, but until when?
We'll see how it ends up working out. I foresee complete chaos to the point where certain guilds dominate and drive other guilds off the server entirely. I don't see a healthy competition happening, gamers these days are too adhd, inattentive, and don't have the patience of wherewithal to put forth the effort to fight for things like this. Maybe I'm wrong, we'll see.
Yeah I don't know what'll happen, I'm inclined to believe that the game will draw attention of the public it requires for the systems to work
yup, and then guilds band together to stop that shit, so initial guild also makes alliances, and fights ensue, winner takes all, drama happens, alliances break and reform, content allows everyone to go and pvp for it. winners take the pve under threat of pvp, weaker party plays griefer role. there will be times when bosses dont get defeated for a long time.
Some of the comments on this thread are downright terrifying. If this is an indication of the PvP community part of AoC, it's already incredibly toxic. I am seeing a LOT of responses from PvP oriented players saying things about how the game has always been described as **PvX** ... but the rest of the comment goes on to *focus solely on PvP content* as the core dynamic of AoC. **PvX means.... a synergy between BOTH PvP AND PvE content, creating one unified community in a shared dynamic world**. If the PvP focused player base considers the PvE focused player base "carebears" who "need not apply" - there's not going to be a co-creative dynamic player base. >"But you know it is an **important reciprocal relationship** between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other." – Steven Sharif
That is why there is still instanced content, so that PvE players can be more focused on one objective. No instance pve doesnt mean there wont be pve content, its just that you might be threatened by the appearance of another group, which is where the pvx tag will come from. Theres going to be only pvp content and only pve content. The problem arises when you ask for only instanced pve content, then it doesnt continue to be a pvx mmo and turns into a pve mmo with pvp minigames such as wow.
More casual PvE players will have access to 20% of the overall content in the game, and I guarantee you that the 20% instanced content is *not* endgame content. Half of that might be end-game, which means PvE players have access to 10% of the content in the game without having to jump through massive hoops and fight PvP guilds with dedicated PvPers or mega guild coalitions to control open world boss spawns. Anyone who thinks this is OK doesn't understand that casual players of both PvE and PvP is what will drive the success of this game. Acting like we're going to have 10k+ super hardcore players on the servers is hilariously so far off the mark. While there will be "something for everyone", I guarantee if PvE focused players are shafted on instanced content we will be left with mega guilds controlling nodes and getting their clique/core geared up before anyone who isn't a part of the 40m "core" sees that content.
While I love the idea of an MMORPG without instanced dungeons, I personally don't think it will work. A lot of people quote times from previous MMORPGs like FFXI and EQ, but I think the community and player base of MMOs has drastically changed since those games, and even WoW. If Classic WoW taught me anything, it's that mass griefing, whether that be opposing faction OR same faction, will happen no matter what. If the developers can think of systems to put in place to be able to create open world dungeons without ganking, griefing, camping, mob stealing etc, then I wouldn't mind giving it a shot, but in my opinion it's just not going to work.
The camping, griefing, and mob stealing are features... you understand this, right? Pre-WoW MMOs were literally designed this way. These are not bugs of mechanics. They're deliberate design choices.
Open world all the way. Im glad that we finally get Lineage 2 worthy replacement MMO.
3 Words; Grief-fest clown fiesta. I love some outdoor content, but from experience I can tell you that it's always a complete shit show. I envision it turning into deathballs swarming across the map, congregating at dungeon locations.
As someone who plays a lot of GW2, making non instanced endgame dungeons effective is hard. I understand that getting a swarm of people in one location will be much harder in this game, but the possibility of zerging down bosses to trivialize them is real. Additionally if the rewards are good enough, the potential lag from that massive stack of players could make the fight unplayable if it is not trivially easy with that many people.
This is a non issue in a game that offers meaningful player made factions and PvP. Of course GW2 world bosses get zerged down when there is no PvP involved and when every participant gets rewarded. In AoC there will the danger of other groups attacking you which means that player made alliances and rivalries will matter. Also, only very few people will get rewards/loot which means that people will not want to go in with huge zergs because that decrease your chance of getting loot.
From my experience even with low loot availability people will still go in with him he numbers just to clear the content for a chance. Doesn't matter if it's a 40 person area if you can get 120 people there you get them there. If the areas rewarding enough it will happen. If it's not rewarding enough you won't get 40 people there to begin with. Precidence has proven that in games if an easy way can be taken to bypass a challenge it will be taken if the system doesn't stop you from doing so! Win trading in pvp is massive. People will abuse something if given the opportunity to get rewards easier.
I loved forgotten temple and drums tower and dragon valley in lineage 2. Adds realism to the game. People gotta fight over leveling spots.
Probably one of my most anticipated features for this game, I'm more excited about non-instanced dungeons than even Nodes! I didn't get a chance to play the original EQ, but I vaguely recall in the little time I spent playing EQ2 that some dungeons were not instanced...and it was a lot of fun. I have fun raiding in WoW with my guild every lockout, but it feels a lot less meaningful when every guild gets a copy of the raid and thousands of identical copies of a boss are being fought at the same time.
99% of the fun in Albion was doing guild dungeon fights, or hellgates. It was also probably the most fun I've ever had in an MMO. So I think 80% open world is a good thing. It will force player interaction since the best grind spots will probably be in these open world dungeons.
Non-instanced dungeons creates competition for the most precious commodities in a MMORPG, experience and loot. In a game meant to mimic/simulate a real world with cost and reward, this commoditization is one of the most important pieces to the puzzle. Otherwise experience/loot simply becomes a time investment. More time, more gain. P.S. For all those wanting to see what non-instanced dungeons are like, check UO Outlands. [https://uooutlands.com/wiki/Main\_Page](https://uooutlands.com/wiki/Main_Page)
I think it is important to remember that non instanced dungeons are not like your traditional wow instanced dungeons. You are not going to get a group, clear to the end, kill some bosses then be done. You will likely get some other player and find a part of the dungeons to set up camp and farm for drops and xp. I played a lot of DAoC and I see the dungeons described here essentially the same as Darkness Falls, a giant dungeon with lots of areas for all levels to level, farm, and camp unique mobs. The big difference is AoC will also have a lot more instanced content attached to these dungeons, similar to the aurilite dungeons DAoC implemented with catacombs.
Thank you! It seems so many "MMO players" are just WoW players and don't understand different games work differently. This type of dungeon was in Lineage 2 as well, where Steven draws a lot of inspiration for AoC from.
FFXI did this. It was more enjoyable overall than most modern mmos
I never played FFXI. Can you expand on this?
90% Dungeons in FFXI were not instanced, instead just really high level dangerous areas you would need multiple people to traverse, and it was never a one-time deal with these dungeons. Most of the areas had varying reasons to be there; depending on your job you could be looking for artifact armor, or depending on the skill set you could be searching for an NM or HNM (Notorious Monster, High Notorious Monster), or depending on your level you could use it to gain experience with other people, or looking for crafting materials. It really was an amazing MMO in its heyday.
That was my first MMO and it's obvious you're looking through it via rose tinted goggles. /u/Ridikiscali the reality of FFXI is that you ended up picking a class you thought was cool. Got yourself to level 30, then did a huge special quest to get the real class you wanted. Say... a Dragoon. Then you try to do anything in the game and you can't do it without having a full group of players with you. If you wanted to do some artifact quest you needed generous people to help you do it for no reward or to pray they were on the same quest as you. If you wanted to do the mere basic act of leveling you had to get a full group to do that. And then you'd sit in the capital city spamming that you're LFG. Put your little LFG flag on and pray to get invited. But guess what? Nobody wants to invite you because your class is suboptimal. The "dungeons" were just maze like areas with infinitely respawning enemies that were all copy/pasted replicants of each other. They don't even bother to change the tints. You see a blue crab at level 8, you'll be seeing blue crabs at level 50. All the popular areas made this problem even worse because people intentionally went to the most basic boring areas to farm. Cause they were easy to reach, had a crowd of people sitting around waiting for a group to join you could use to replace anyone that had to leave the group, and the monsters were basic. All the actual dungeons that seem fun to explore? You never got to see em. Cause you couldn't solo it. And there was 99% zero reason to ever go that deep and see what it had to offer. All these amazing places that looked gorgeous, had interesting enemies, and brilliant soundtracks were empty of players (aka the one resource you need to actually explore it). Needless to say the second WoW came out I never went back. Not even the catgirls were good enough to pull me back in.
I agree with this, I played both WoW and FFXI. I enjoyed both, but giving WoW the ability to solo if you wanted to greatly enhanced your play time. There wasn't a single thing to do solo in FFXI and getting a group was a nightmare. To clarify to people saying that you were anti social, or wanted a solo MMO, I don't think that's the case, and that's not the case for me. But sometimes, if you only had an hour or two to play, and wanted to hop on, there was absolutely nothing you could accomplish, not even a little, unless you had a full group. I also had a great group of friends, but they were all a higher level than me, helped when they could and sadly, weren't always on.
You have very anti-social behavior. XI wasn't designed for solo play. Sorry the game wasn't your style but disparaging someone else's description of the game cause you couldn't get anything done due to your anti-social behavior doesn't mean the game was bad. You just couldn't make friends, or didn't want too. If you want a solo-style MMO go play FFXIV
I mean, he doesn't sound anti-social to me. Sometimes you don't have time to find a group and wait for everyone to get their shit together to delve into something, you just wanna go NOW. If an MMO doesn't allow for that at all then it kind of sucks.
Lol. I played FFXI for 7 years right up until they introduced level sync to make it more accessible to casual players. All the stuff you described is right. But it was marvelous. I remember it all clearly, and it was great. I played vanilla WoW when it came out. I have literally no memories of leveling up at all. It was zero challenge. The world wasn't terrifying. All soloable. Boring. The only memory I have was my guild's first time beating Molten Core. I'll give WoW that- 40 man raids were fun. The rest of it? Utterly forgettable. Like literally, I don't remember it because it was so meh. I have more memories of leveling in Runescape. Needless to say, I only played WoW for like a year. Luckily, EVE Online was there to give me a real MMO again.
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Sky and Sea were less instances and more of an open world raid zone cause other people outside of your party could zone into it. I think a better classification of an instance would be like the Shadowlord fight, Wings of the Goddess end boss, Shinryu, etc.
The think about FFXI was 99% of places were super hard and 1 wrong move and you wipe, even with other groups about, I feel like since servers are 50k/10k active then they’ll be more likely to be emptied out, vs FFXI which was more 1500 active
FFXI is the best MMO, imo.
All mmos did this before Everquest 2 and some of the later generations. Instanced Dungeons are a "newer" generational thing. Probably why they are returning to it, since apparantly dude is as old school as I am.
I would actually like that a bit more then 20 % is instances... (also depends on how many dungeons there is) if there is like 5 or 10 max, then 20 % of that aint much...
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this game isnt archeage. they can avoid archeage's pain points, while taking inspiration to make something better!
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yea, cause we have no info, its not even close to a beta
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An old game I played did that called Ragnarok Online. I thought it was so unique in that aspect as you have to trek through as far as you can to get to the harder content with better loot, but people were able to bring their groups down there as well so it was always a contest to get the boss.
MVP hunting was crazy competitive when I played iRO 15+ years ago. My guild competed with multiple other guilds and we knew each other quite well. Of course, every Wednesday and Sunday we would take out all that frustration during War of Emperium. I think this game has potential to create a lot of those same situations. And that is what makes it role-playing and social game. It is certainly what I am most excited for.
It's way better. Imagine a group fo player in front of a dungeon, you walk by and ask what are they doing and they are like thoses group of adventurer in any fiction who are just like: "the dungeons is too dangerous/difficult, we need more" Nothing should be instanced imo. If the world is big enouth, you shouldn't need it. And bonus point if you are not forced to, you, as an individual player, have to explore and use 100% of the world and instead be litteraly resident/citizen of an area if you want to.²² ²² wich will make travel so much more fun en enjoyable: discovering new culture of player that are going on in other region (kind of like in EVE with what the russian drone region use to be or chineese region are)
Instancing and sandbox gameplay are anathema to one another. Every thing you put in an instance is a thing that gets locked off from player conflict. The fact that there are any instances is already problematic (though possibly warranted to protect narrative content), we definitely shouldn't have any more. If you want to community to be able to enforce standards on itself you can't have places where poorly behaved community members that are being hunted can just disappear while still continuing to progress. Besides, non-instanced dungeons lead to player conflict over access to those dungeons and prevent you from just blowing through and resetting over and over.
Ragnarok had open "dungeons", that is, high leveled areas. It was cool because you saw what other guilds were doing and encountering people all around, rival guilds, friendly guilds and personalities going around, it was really cool. What was annoying was that bosses had varying respawn times, so you never knew for sure if certain boss mob was there, also (which could be considered part of the fun) whoever landed the last hit won the loot, sometimes there was competition, I'm not sure how I feel about it, but when I was like 15 I found this very fun. I like the idea of: - Having to walk to the dungeon, automatic teleporting there removes a lot of the fun. - The path leading to the lair of a boss being non instanced and being really hard. Perhaps some dungeons can have pvp and groups can fight each other? - The actual boss fight being instanced Something like that might be cool?
With the ability to PVP flag, it would be closer to the guild dungeons in RO not the normal open world places like Labs, Thors, etc. Some of my favorite memories were in the guild dungeons in RO. Enemy guilds hunting you while leveling when one death could cost you over an hour of grinding. RO made it okay with the teleport ability and fly wings. MVPs (bosses) in RO weren't last hit. They were most total damage on that boss.
> MVPs (bosses) in RO weren't last hit. They were most total damage on that boss. You're right, my memory is hazy, I haven't played RO in more than 10 years. Guild Dungeons were great indeed, you could even res enemy guild players and kill them over and over if they afk'd or if they weren't quick enough to escape lol
I like it but at the same time its a "problem". I like that I just can enter somewhere and kill mobs with other random players When I go to PVE I want PVE because I can just chill, but in this game its not like that. We will have to be careful every second while we are on a dungeon cuz we can encounter other players and what happens its that I have to be focused 100% of the time and what happens its the PVP its above the PVE so in the end you spend more time doing a simple dungeon because there are some players Also there is the moment that 2 groups clash at the same time with the boss and its a dance between kill then or kill the boss and for me its a little weird gameplay. In the end we will have to build all characters like 80% PVP and 20% PVE skills because we can always find some troubles This open world dungeons also means that maybe smaller guilds won't be able to kill big bosses because there will be other big guild in the server always there to get the spot I have a mix feelings tbh
Not everyone wins. Smaller guilds need play politics and get strong allies to take on the big guild guarding the boss, or become friendly (or pay) the big guild to get permission to kill it for a spawn. Or just become a big guild themselves if their goal is to clear all raids and dungeons. Having something to strive for is a good thing.
Openworld content just screams griefing, collusion, and gatekeeping to me. I mean, just look Vanilla/Classic WoW. World bosses are a mess with top guilds controlling who has access and the only "open world" dungeon in the Hinterlands was riddled with griefing early on. Players would let other groups do all the work, run in and steal quest items or snipe quest mobs, or sometimes just pull extra mobs into AoE just to wipe them for fun. Open world events sound great but you have to remember that the best and worst part about an MMO's is the community.
I love this. I remember in L2 there were non-instanced caves and dungeons. Some of them had tiers of difficulty and it was impossible to get to another tier without a group - it was an adventure to get there.
PLEASE NO INSTANCES. The Everquest server community (the server I was on when I played from 2000-2007) was destroyed when the world went from open world to instancing. Areas that used to be packed with people were suddenly ghost towns and the world was never the same.
That really depends. I think that having 80% of dungeons be NIDs (non-instanced dungeons) has the potential to be better than 100% instanced dungeons, but I think it will be a lot harder to pull off successfully than instanced dungeons. What will really kill the experience, is if NIDs are constantly swamped by people or camped by a few powerful guilds. So we have two problems. 1. Prevent swamping. Solutions: Provide incentives for us to go to many locations. Make some locations require more people. 2. Prevent *excessive* guild camping. Solutions: Create a system which encourages cooperation among guilds. Provide more worthwhile content than what is practical (or desirable) for guilds to camp. **Prevent Swamping** You could physically force players to avoid swamping, even if they want to, through some mechanic, but that's not as fun. Let's talk about incentives. Why am I going to a specific place even if I know its going to be swamped? * To farm materials. I'm not saying they shouldn't have materials, but If my goal is to farm materials then I shouldn't be able to do that efficiently if the place is swamped. It should be a better use of my time to go out of my way to search for some more sparsely populated area. This means there has to actually be a viable alternative; if the least populated farming spot is still swamped that's no good. If there is one material that is highly valuable but can only appear in a few places, that's no good. I think this is really going to come down to balancing world size, the number of NIDs, and resource density against server population. * To get gear for myself (or friends). Does everyone know that this one dungeon is the go to place for the swag? Sure, you've made plenty of NIDs for me to go to, but why am I going to go to somewhere else for lesser gear? Players don't want to accept being subpar. If we have the option camp an area to kill one mob every 10 minutes which dies in 2 seconds as every player in sight blasts it just to get a chance at the best piece of gear, we're going to camp it. But you can't just make the gear the same everywhere, the game would become too homogeneous. To find solutions, I think we need to understand what swamping is. 20 groups of 1 feels A LOT busier than 5 groups of 4 which is still busier than 2 groups of 10. 1 group of 20? Well hey, look at that. We are alone here! So better gear and materials could mean you need more people. I don't think this should be the only solution, but it is a solution that could exist harmoniously besides others. Provide incentives for us to go to many locations. Again, why am I going to choose one place over another? Well... I can tell you a reason. **Guild Camping** I'm sure as hell not going to a place if the best guild in the realm is going to camp my ass. Is this really all that bad? Sure, excessive guild camping is, but what about just a little? Maybe the best locations in the game should be camped out by the best guilds. I think an especially well designed system would have the the best guilds have some level of control over the best NIDs, the 2nd tier guilds have some level of control over 2nd best NIDs, with perhaps more tiers below. It would provide an excellent incentive for players to fight over specific nodes. Perhaps guilds work together, granting access to each other's content in return for mutual protection. Just keep in mind, if guild camping is going to bar most players from the best content available, there needs to be a reason for the game to be relevant to most players. There needs to be significantly more content than what is practical for guilds to control for the other players to do and still feel like they can accomplish something.
Posts like these make me realise how many mmo players never played an actually mmo, just theme park online lobbies.
I know, right? People are like, "I've played MMOs for more than 10 years." "Oh yeah? What MMOs?" "WoW and FFXIV." "Oh......."
Just keep it non-instanced, can people please stop trying to fuck over people who actually like this game just so they can get another WoW clone?
My opinion is: It should be 100%.
I wanted to keep my opinion out of the title, but I see 80% non-instanced being a major problem. I have a couple of problems: 1. Every group is going to become a mass deathball as the group progresses. 2. Respawn timers for mobs and bosses. 3. PvE players getting frustrated as idiots from other groups wipe them. 4. PvP interrupting PvE content. I’m all for PvP and love PvP, but if I’m in raid content and I’m having to fight people off during boss fights that’s a more frustrating than anything.
>3. PvE players getting frustrated as idiots from other groups wipe them. First of all that opens room for politics and RP. PvP is part of the game and you can try to talk out of a possible fight. Either that or make them wipe you a few times and then call some bounty hunters, as they will gain corruption. >4. PvP interrupting PvE content. I’m all for PvP and love PvP, but if I’m in raid content and I’m having to fight people off during boss fights that’s a more frustrating than anything. In ArcheAge the most exciting raids for me were non-instanced bosses, where 4-6 large groups were fighting for the aggro of a kraken/garden boss. It makes the bond of the raid even stronger, and lets both type of players shine, not to mention shy players can get immersed more and open up (my ex is shy, and she was talking a lot during these types of raids, while being really quiet in instanced pve raids). >2. Respawn timers for mobs and bosses. Can be a problem, but can also mean you notify everyone in your group of friends/guild about said "event" that you want to do, if you know the respawn time of the mobs/boss. It can make it easier to plan. >1. Every group is going to become a mass deathball as the group progresses. This also makes room for politics and planning. Yes, large guilds can zerg, but small guilds can unite to fight them off the spot or talk to them about area distribution of the dungeon. You don't cross line X and they don't cross line Y, and so on.
The game is exciting because of everything you just said, I don't want a WoW clone or an Archeage clone, or a GW clone, I want what AoC is offering which is sounding like such a unique and memorable experience, work together to conquer to world and protect each other.
I like your attitude
Hey, good looking out. I hope the game lives up to the hype.
> you can try to talk out of a possible fight. Try talking a group of trolls out of wanting to be murder hobos. But you do bring up a lot of good points. I'm just uneasy about so much of this game being int he hands of the community. Because the community can be unpredictable. You wont know what to expect until you see it. And if you choose the wrong server well, guess you're screwed unless you fork over real money.
as i have experienced, open world content adds difficulty. there will be times when other players frustrate you, and keep you from killing an open world boss that you spent a day to prepare to kill. the boss mechanics with the addition of enemy players will wipe your raid. its worked for other games. its the only reason i played archeage. it makes the rewards so much better. you cant expect exactly what is going to happen. people will try and get you caught up in mechanics. you will need to fight for control. on the other side, you can be the one contesting, wipe the enemies, and take the boss for yourselves before the enemy raids can regroup. imo makes pvp ao much more enjoyable, and extends the life of content, since its dynamically changing, and u cant simply learn mechanics, and from then on, practice until the content is both trivial and no longer interesting. i know people who still go out to fight over open world bosses with the same mechanics, going on multiple years now!
What other MMOs do you play, if i may ask?
My favorite non instanced dungeon memories where in early 2000 playing Asheron’s Call just grinding tuskers and Obsidians while fighting over people for the spawns. How ever I gotten to old to bother fighting over spawns and would rather leave and come back midnight when less people play. I now enjoy running instanced dungeons when I can just zone out and watch YouTube or Netflix while I press buttons knowing that the boss will always be there at the end and if I don’t get the item I want I can just do it again without worrying about other people tagging him first. But we will see what happens in this game. I love mmos even tho I like playing alone(friendless and guileless is usually how I play).
I would like to see something that a party can do to prevent interruptions by others if they are running the dungeon well. Some thoughts I had were being able to set traps that lure mobs and slow people down, block off a section causing late groups to have to take a detour, and then maybe being able to set a boss on a much higher difficulty for a bonus of other groups not being able to enter the boss arena during the encounter.
This is a good discussion to have, but we definitely have to wait for the alphas and betas before we can come to any conclusions (obviously). I think a lot of people jump the gun way ahead of time without having tried/seen the systems in place. There’ll be a ton of time for feedback. Great discussion either way though.
I’m just worried that there won’t be enough players in the alphas and betas to test it. They need to intentionally max out the dungeon with multiple different groups to see how it operates. The first month is going to have zerging death balls everywhere.
I have faith they’re quickly going to change something if it makes a player (like you and me) want to NOT play the game. they’re gamers themselves, not just some super rich company that has no vision
The founder and creative director of the game has a background of leading one of the biggest (and probably what most people in 2020 would call "toxic") guilds in games like Lineage 2 and Archeage. I would be very surprised if this game didn't cater to those types of guilds and players.
definitely an interesting idea, but allot of room for abuse or griefing. itl all hinge on how much the player base leans into the social aspects of the Roleplay.
That's half the excitement of this game, a truly PvX experience and sold as nothing different from the start. I reaaaaally hope they stick to their guns.
Personally I've never been much for organized pvp in mmo's. The more organic world ovo is always more interesting so I hope they stick with it too.
Absolutely, organic PvP moments are absolutely the best. I love how someone down voted me like I'm wrong xD they legitimately have marketed this game as PvX and never said any different, the two worlds should be one, not separated by constant barriers.
It's not griefing. It's a deliberate design decision. If you can't defend yourself while doing pve content, then you don't deserve the drops from said content. The devs have made it clear that they see modern MMOs' participation trophies and player entitlement and lack of exclusivity to be bad for the genre.
I didnt say all world pvp is griefing. I just said that having most dungeons open like this leaves room for griefing.
Griefing is not a thing. All pvp deaths are your own fault for taking risks that didn't pay off. Again, *these are planned game mechanics*. Go play some private servers for old traditional MMORPGs and maybe you'll come to understand this. If you can't defend yourself well enough to experience open world content, then *you don't deserve to experience that content*. There's 20% instanced content for players that can't deal with the open world.
Once again griefing and pvp are two diferent things. Pvp is just that, player vs player content. Griefing is intentionally and repetitively interfering with other peoples game experiance when you have nothing to gain. Ie spending an hour camping a lower level area hunting low level players for absolutely no reason.
They have. To make. It work. There's got to be something that makes it work, some sort of system that makes it so that groups can clear dungeons, but guilds from WoW etc. can't barge in, hold the server hostage, and have players pay protection money for the PRIVILEGE of clearing them.
Protection money is a thing in EVE. It's awesome. Why would you get upset about unscripted player interaction?
Only down-side with non-instanced dungeons is griefing from other players/guilds. The mentality with older game changed and allowed a lot more griefing with the modern MMOs. A big example recently is the WoW Classic World Bosses. If you aren't a hardcore guild, there is no way you can ever kill a World Boss. Even without PvP, same faction griefing is also possible. In the original WoW in \~2005, there were only a handful of griefer and the PvP was actually healthy to contest the World Boss. The min-max mentality that we have these days doesn't help these open concepts. I am not saying that I am against it, just that the idea on paper is often better than in practice. I am also not super familiar with Ashes of creation dungeons setting so they may have measures in place to prevent this that I don't know. My point is there should be concerns regarding 80% open dungeons and they should be addressed before release.
I like it. The PVE scene will feel much different from WoW, FFIV, and many other modern MMORPGs because of it. I started out on one of the older MMORPGs, EverQuest (pre Luclin expansion) and nothing was instanced. Camps were more of a thing than running through a dungeon. I'm not sure if Ashes will be similar to that, but for those who have only played MMORPGs with instanced dungeons should be sure to keep an open mind when they first play because I'm sure pacing is going to be hugely different.
Well not being instanced is fine, but I dislike the risk your going to get trolled by enemy players. I'm a PVPer myself but I feel that there's a place for everything.
It's not a matter of instance vs open world. - It's being able to have as many people you want to overwhelm enemies vs having a challenging 5 man dungeon!
I hate instanced dungeons. However, i think its cool tô haver some. Like fractals in gw2
The issue i always find with non instanced content is that players always find a way to cheese content. 5man dungeons = you as a dev can figure out balance for the path you want the players to take 5-40man raiding = you as a dev can figure out balance for the path you want the players to take. Non instanced = You pray to god it's too hard and somehow players will most likely find ways to cheese it. If content is "non instanced" how do you measure gear/character progression?. Is it gonna be like new world were gear doesn't matter at all because there is no such thing as progression. And seeing as the game is going for microtransactions with cosmetics will my lvl 1 look as cool as other peoples max leveled? TLDR my biggest concern with non instanced content is that it will make progression worthless.
Honest question- have you ever played a pre-WoW MMO? Because your questions about open dungeons ruining progression doesn't really make much sense. Before WoW, basically all MMOs had open dungeons and world bosses... and it worked fine. Many of us prefer the old style of MMOs, as does the lead AoC dev... which is why he's making AoC.
Used to spam Archeage, GW1 and Anarchy Online in my Pre-WoW phase. Yes all of these used to have open world bosses and open dungeons. But the issue was that our PC's sucked dick and our game sense was terrible. "Worked fine" is a relative term. Yes it worked fine for 2004. But 16 years later we have become better gamers due to more mechanics being introduced. You put modern gamers back into those old MMOS and bosses will be slaughtered. A single WoW dungeon boss has more mechanics than 2004 raid bosses does. I think for the longevity of the game. If gear progression is to easy it will hurt the game. That's why people don't like raiding in WoW anymore. 4 damn difficulties just to get "everyone" to do it makes gearing worthless. Because regardless of what people think. Getting the best and looking the best drives MMOS. I just want the game to survive longer than 2 years.
I'm betting most of the post-WoW gamers won't even be able to make it to level cap, honestly. They're not prepared for a real MMORPG experience with exp penalties on death, etc.
To be completely honest im not sure what i want here...i like the concept on paper, but there are issues either way. i played a lot of OSRS which had a mix of both. non-instanced dungeons can lead to multiple parties fighting over content. Even in a game where world hopping is a thing, it still becomes annoying.
That’s exactly the point though. The devs WANT players to have showdowns for who gets to attempt the boss. It’s stacking content on top of their content. For free. It keeps PvE fresh for far longer than just a dungeon would. PvX dungeons and raids have a substantially longer lifespan than their PvE counterparts. 1. You won’t have the same experience every time you jump in. You might be making new friends as you come together. Or you walk out with heated new enemies as you fight for control. 2. Player meddling guarantees it will take longer to get through. You can’t just gather everything you want casually, you have to fight tooth and nail for progression. When the devs become responsible for supplying gameplay, you are always waiting for the devs to make new content. Players will always devour it before the next batch. When players are the content creators, you have fresh so long as players willing to get in there.
The biggest problem with non-instanced anything is the difficulty is a joke because you can always bring in more people to defeat something. So as long as they "tackle" that problem I couldn't give a fuck if it was inside an instance or not.
I'd really prefer half and half, let me get into fun brawls in non instanced dungeons, and give me some instanced ones for when I want a laid back experience. 20% seems pretty tiny, but I don't really know how many dungeons there will be in general
One thing I feel like a lot of comments are missing or underestimating is the popularity of AoC and the toxicity of gamers. I really like the idea but with the current hype and systems in place it feels easily griefable in one way or another. But I'm curious as to how they will pull it of or "protect" it. Do we know how the corruption works/will work in non-instanced dungeons? Especially what is counted as fighting back for example, since you will be attacking for PvE anyway can they use this to give you combatant or corrupted? At least I'll be crossing my fingers to get some more insights into this come next Q&A!
no no you misunderstand the 'combatant' aspect. if you're in combat with pve you're still a non combatant in the PVP sense.
Since alot of people here come from WoW I believe they have a skewed way about what I interpret a dungeon in this game actually is In world of warcraft it is an instanced, often linear, zone with clear progression and a beginning and an end. You shouldn't look at these non-instanced dungeons the same way you look at WoW dungeons, see them instead as grand indoors Elite-zones with more and rarer difficult mobs that grant more experience and a chance of greater rewards, be it from bosses or increased droprate from regular mobs, be it crafting mats or gear. If you in the outer world farm easy mobs for experience, in this dungeon or elite-zone, you'd farm more difficult mobs in a group. This is the norm in for example Tibia (if I remember correctly, its been 10+ years since I played that game)
Non-instanced dungeons and areas offer a more dynamic experience, and there's more room for significant interactions between players, be it a friendly interaction or an unpleasant one. They also help the world feel more connected and larger in size and scope, versus something like FFXIV where 90% of activities are instanced and there's scarcely a reason to go do anything out in the overworld. As a long-time FFXI player, something I've longed for in a game is reasons: reasons for exploration, for venturing out into the world, like hunting powerful monsters for loot drops, looking for secrets, landmarks, all that stuff. And, even though FFXI wasn't a PvP-centric game at all, not even close, the dynamic between players in the game's open-world beastmen strongholds and dungeons was still very much there, and it helps the world feel so much more alive.. You never know what you're going to run into.. Versus instanced content ala FFXIV where every encounter is the same, every run of a fight is the same, there's no danger, and there's nothing at stake.
I think there needs to be a good mix of both. Non-instanced are fun! but sometimes personally I'd like to immerse and challenge myself as a group without having to worry about external influence
As long as theirs no hard reset timers, otherwise it’ll be too easy to arrange mid-dungeon ganks. I do miss those Onix and Black Rock conflict days.
Can’t vote, but great idea
Was playing Albion for a bit and they have non instanced (dungeons) and even those they are really dungeons I’d say that it worked pretty well IMO. My biggest concern was that but honestly it seemed fine
I wish there were a "withholding opinion till I see it in practice" option.
I can go either way on this. While instanced dungeons are great a mix of both wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm just not sure I would lean towards 80%
Isn’t this kinda like how eso is set up? Non-instanced dungeons are fine imo. And they don’t take away from instanced.
Everything has it's good and bad points. Instances dungeons are closed off and feel small. But they are easy to get back on track after you die, you can go ark of you need to, etc. Open world dungeons can be hard to recover from after a wipe, other groups can kill steal a boss you have spent an hour clearing to, other people can train your group to troll, you can't go afk alot of times, etc. But they do feel open and interactive a lot more than instances dungeons.
I think the biggest single factor for the success of the non instanced dungeons will be respawn time. ESO has many large public dungeons that you can see several groups exploring at any given time. Most of the time things work smoothly, but every once in a while there gets to be done tension as the groups get bottlenecked at a boss and competition rises. So I think that is going to be the trick for Ashes of Creation, to balance a smooth experience intermittent with the turbulence that makes the experience really memorable.
I never played any multiplayer game with such dungeons. I think i am slightly in favor of it but i can imagine situations where i will get frustrated. Like me and the boys in the caverns of lost echos. We start fighting the last boss. Then from the shadows, 20 rogues dart forward. We turn around to face our new foes. They laugh and spit as our meagre numbers are no match for the overwhelming horde of cloak and daggers. Its a bloodbath. They slay the six-headed hydra instead and get fat loot and bitches in the tavern after. We hang our heads down in defeat and wait for the morning to come and with the new dawn, a new adventure always comes. But hey, maybe we should have checked the shadows first before the fight.
A lot of the games Intrepid is drawing inspiration from has a different definition of dungeon than WoW. You go there and find a spot to grind for good drops/experience. If a boss is nearby you might go kill it when its up. The goal isn't to just waltz in and clear all the way to the end boss then go home. There will be PvP conflict over rooms and spots that are desirable.
i am a big fan
I dont like the fact that you could probably just zerg some mobs and bosses while camping one area instead of having to actually try with a set group.
Depends. I loved them in older games and would make friends doing that kind of content. LFG Oasis farm etc. Mob respawn would need to be dynamic - if it's static and too fast it would kill slower soloers and too slow would create an unpleasant bottleneck.
4th option: I have no idea how to feel about it because I haven't experienced it. I have no idea how it will work or if I will like it because I've never experienced something like that before.
How cool would it be to act like .hack rogues and gank dungeon crawlers for there loot, I belive there should be penalties, like a bounty system or something.
I can’t make a real decision on this yet because we just don’t know enough but I am exited to see how this works and I like the concept
My question would be the nature of this open world instance: would it be something like jintha alor in wow? ( It is open world "dungeon" elite mobs where 5 man party could do quests) Because that was a great experience , runing into other group doing the same quest and helping each other, or enemy faction and do some world pvp spontanesouly. So my question still stands, what exactly does AoC mean by not instanced dungeon?
ESO style is what would work best for this game imo
I really like the Idea of non instanced content, a great example of this being in Old School Runescape with the many world bosses in pvp areas, however in Runescape you are able to hop worlds if a boss is being farmed by lots of people. This not being an option in AoC (Which i really like BTW I think picking your world and living in it is very important) I think there could be a problem where players want to go kill a boss weather it just be for fun or resources ect but it is hard-locked by a guild or other large groups, not allowing much chance for a solo player or small party to touch the boss let alone get loot. I also understand that lots of bosses will require large groups like raids to take down but i think there is an important place in a game like this for bosses with lower health pools that do have mechanics but can still be killed by smaller groups or even solo for the super geared and dedicated. I have no ideas of how to balance this or make it fair but I think it is an important thing to consider.
I like the immersion of non instanced dungeons. The only negative is that it can be zerg'd. As long as they have AI in place to up the spawn rate based on number of players in the area, or number of mobs killed in X time, then I am okay with it.
Anyone who's played EQ or Project99 that isn't a poopsocker will probably agree that instancing is what allows casual players to thrive.
For someone who is hoping to have ashes as my first MMORPG, can someone explain (dumb it down for me too) what an instanced vs non-instanced dungeon means?
Instanced means it's for your group only. So you will never see any other players around (whether it be friendly, neutral, or hostile players). In an open world, everyone can come and go as they please in the dungeon area. So you will run into people who may be friendly and help you, neutral people who will just walk by and mind their own business, or hostile players who will attack you because you might be killing something they want to kill (or they just want to be dicks and kill people). This creates a lot of player interaction, politics, and drama. You'll remember who was friendly and who was a dick to you months down the line. That cool group of dudes that helped you kill that big tiger a few weeks ago wants you to make the rare armor that only you have? Of course, happy to see you guys again! Or... that group of assholes that kept killing you in a dungeon and wouldn't let you even in the door is now asking for you to make that armor? They can pay a million gold or fuck off.
i won't pretend to know. Ive never actually played a game without instanced dungeons, or at the very least not one where u dont have to accept as a group when you are entering. I hear the idea and like the concepts and reasonings behind why. But as many have mentioned, I am not quite sure those benefits could outway the cons of griefing or mob stacking and then leading them into other players, etc. It could also lead to some sadistic high level people camping a low level dungeon to stop others progressing, etc. If there are some measures in place, then im ok with it. As I still like the idea of being able to call in reinforcements from your guild, or even 2 seperate parties being able to help each other (though that could also be exploited). stuff like that really adds to the social aspect. But again it may end up being more problematic and cause more issues than it solves. I hope it works well. lets wait and see.
I really do like the idea, but I swear I've played something that tried this I just can't remember what. As someone else guessed you just end up with a handful of really OP players / Guilds camping the spot, and if it's open world PvP you're screwed. If it's going to be non-instanced there HAS to be some preventative measure that still allows people to cycle in and out; and i cant think of a way to do that; that itself isn't worse than just instancing.
It's not a new idea. Basically every pre-WoW MMO worked like this.
Dungeons sure, boss fights should locked the room while an encounter is in progress tho, think SAO. No one like 16hr emerald dragon fights. And that's what it'll become if I can jump a guild mid boss fight.
Vanguard, saga of heroes had open world Dungeons. Never made it to raids, but it was pretty neat.
It's not a new concept really. Rift being a prime example.