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Upcoming revisions to PvE combat
We sat down recently and really hammered on what we think is wrong with PvE combat and is reasonably fixable. The former category is a lot bigger than the latter category, obviously. When I first built Achaea, I explicitly didn't give a crap about PvE combat beyond needing it because it's what people expect in an RPG, and because leveling up is a popular and proven mechanic. Everybody does PvE, so I focused on PvP.
However, there's no reason it can't suck less than it does now. It's never going to be in the same league, or even close, to our PvP, but that's no reason not to make it at least somewhat better than it is.
On tap:
- Longer denizen fights. When many people one-shot so many denizens, it leaves no opportunity whatsoever for any kind of additional tactics. Of course, along with longer denizen fights will be proportionately increased gold and xp for killing denizens.
- More abilities to use in PvE. In particular, abilities that will make group bashing more efficient than solo bashing, though every class is also going to get at least one other bashing ability that's useful solo. The goal here is that while bashing may be f1 f1 f1 f1 f1 right now, it'd be slightly better if it was f1 f1 f1 f2 f1 f1 f3, if you see what I mean.
- More intelligent targeting AI for denizens. When we're done, they won't just attack the last person to hit them. They'll try to assess who poses the greatest risk, whether via direct damage or granting group buffs, or casting debuffs on the denizen or whatever - the idea is that managing aggro is going to become a thing, at least for bigger mobs that people won't be able to one-shot anymore.
- Abilities that work more effectively against certain kinds of denizens. For instance, purely hypothetically, a knight's bashing attacks might be more effective against humanoid than magical creatures. I'm currently going through every single individual type of denizen in the game (more than 5000) and categorizing them into one of a few categories so that we can do that.
Anyway, that's the general plan. It's a fair amount of work, but it's one of the priorities currently and will likely be done in a few weeks. It's also only step 2 in working on bashing. Step 1 was the balancing. Step 2 is about capabilities, and then step 3 is going to be about content - more varied, interesting boss fights in particular.
Comments
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Enh, if it makes hunting more interesting that's cool. If it's just about "I am hunting this area so I hit f2 instead of f1" then it's kind of whatever.
Super, super excited for these. Better PvE content is going to make for a better Achaea overall, better newbie retention, and more interesting things even for us Dragons to do. I might start bashing again eventually!
Really looking forward to this and step three being completed.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Step 3 is really not about completion. It's a perpetual thing, in practice. We could spend forever improving content. It's about finding the balance of cost vs. reward for us.
As a concept this sounds pretty awesome, I can't wait to see some specifics.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Thank you, some more PvE love. With PvP being so rich, it did seem a real shame that PvE was pretty one dimensional.
All the details I'm going to give right now are in the initial post, but you sound like you might be overestimating our ability to create content. We're talking a handful of high-level mobs most likely, at first. World of Warcraft is definitely not what you should have in mind - our PvE will never even approach coming close to theirs.
Btw, I think maybe you've not explored the Den of the Quisalis if you think no cool PvE areas have gone in recently! The Grandmaster of the Quisalis is one of toughest denizens in Achaea, with only 5 people having managed to earn the honours line thus far.
During the early stages of the Conclave event I said on a clan, "I think this event is the testing grounds for more varied PvE, group boss fights, and epic loot drops". Then came relics and now this.
I AM THE FORETELLER OF FUTURES
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Since we're talking mostly about PvE grinding that means you'd hit somewhere around 3 buttons. That's very achievable complexity. Something like a boss-fight however would be more what you're talking about.
Yeah, correct @Verrucht. It's the dungeon raids/boss fights we're never going to come close to equaling. Our inability to do granular relative positioning between players/denizens in a room alone ensures that, and doing that in text would be a total nightmare for usability anyway.
This sounds interesting.
I am apprehensive that after the novelty fades, most bashing will still boil down to repetition, even if it's repetition of something new. I look forward to seeing how you tackle that. Presumably you have something more in mind than allowing people to alternate thornrend with firelash for no tangible benefit beyond variety for variety's sake; reflection and razeslash stand out as existing bashing abilities that provide some tactical depth.
NPC AI targeting, and specifically the implication of juggling aggro in group bashing, seems interesting because it allows players to make bashing interesting for each other in ways NPCs cannot. "You messed up and I died!" "lol sorry (not sorry)" is more interesting than solo bashing mishaps like "the mhun mage RNGed her strong attack three times in a row and I died" or "a third vertani walked in and I died".
I am excited to see what you do with boss fights, and how widespread they become, especially after seeing what you did in the Conclave event.
Blujixapug said:
Welcome to MUDs/MMOs!
My philosophy in general is that change is sometimes good simply for its own sake in these environments, because of the novelty factor. There're other at least as important factors too, but jolts of novelty are important, even if novelty is by definition temporary.
An interesting bit would be if you could work in the concept of interrupts to keep the fights more dynamic. Even if you just gave each class a generic-ish interrupt to hit, and it was something that could be done without balance/equilibrium. It would still end up being scripted, but it would be a novel addition.
I'm assuming the amount of total denizens is going to be cut down, or what?
Wouldn't really make sense to keep 50 sidhe in Annwyn if they all take much longer to fight/drop more reward.
Also, how badly is this going to screw over people that want to solo bash?
Wouldn't it? Bashing areas would conceivably be able to support more people per spawn, rather than one single dragon being able to monopolise a high-level area (the "oh Penwize is here, nvm" effect).
I think it will definitely help with newbie retention. I remember how excited I was looking at all these amazing skills I'm learning and then being quite disappointed I could only really use one or two. I realize you may only be adding one or two more to hunting but it's still good for a bit of variety. Looking forward to this!
LF tank and 2 dps for Hardmode Garden of the Gods, currently up to Mecha-Tecton. PST for invite.
Yes, yes it is.
Hell yes to these changes! (As long as they make dragon harder to achieve)
Then there would be an infinite amount of things to bash, which is a huge contrast from the way things are now. Grinding one area would take much longer and reap much higher rewards. Things wouldn't get bashed out and people wouldn't have to change areas nearly as often. Being able to just stay in one area grinding one denizen type for so long would make bashing much more efficient than having to wander around and find new things. Right now, bashing areas are a bit of a 'resource' that a person has to go around looking for/planning out. If changed like this idea proposes(without any compensating changes), then there would always be tons of high level denizens for anyone to bash, with no such thing as competition or resource management(with their being virtually unlimited resources, in this case). The sheer availability of high level denizens and the rewards involved would drastically change the landscape of the game.
And then.... 18 year old dragon alts everywhere... Yeah that would not be good in the least.