PVE needs changes

Nylian · February 2016

Quests are fine as is, I think. Somewhat hidden so you get to do some discovery. I really enjoy that part of it and wouldn't change it.

Overall though, compared to most other online type games, PVE in Achaea is terrible. It reminds me of using only auto-attack to level up in something like WOW, EQ, or others, take your pick. Battlerage has added a few skills to it, which is nice, but at the heart of it, all it did was add a bit of coding work to optimize battlerage handling.

I propose one of the following:

Completely overhaul PVE - I expect this to be less of a possibility because of the amount of rewrite required to something core and already in place. Alternatively (and more likely), create new areas with a completely different architecture for PVE.

You could do things like Tank, Puller, Healer, DPS, CC, Debuffer, Buffer as archetypes, a standard that so many online fantasy games have been successful with.
These new areas could be instanced (or not), and your new PVE skills could only be used in these areas (to keep them from messing with combat or current bashing balances).
PVE Raids could be done on castles, dungeons, dragons, or what have you, with real world consequences. For example, the most recent winners of said raid could get a 24hr experience boost, or gold boost, or favored or whatever. Lots of ideas to be had here, the community can come up with more than I can for sure.

The content could scale based on the size of your party, but making the skills of each "subclass" with sufficient potency to impact the overall fight.

These archetypes could be added as a "Subclass" that anyone could purchase, but you couldn't have more than one or two (and only one active at a time). Or each current class could have it's abilities defined for each. (Shaman would be a debuffer, DSL knights DPS, SnB knights tanks, etc).

New artefacts could be introduced that increase/decrease the agro you generate, that hold up a single denizen (like additional CC), that increase healing in only these areas. Artefacts that break you from CC, reduce the damage dealt by said denizens, add an additional subclass, reduce time to change subclasses, and a plethora of other options that all relate to this new PVE content. I bring this up because any large change or implementation such as this should have some sort of ROI for IRE.

There are many considerations here too, overall experience and gold gain must be balanced and on par with the time spent today. I'm not looking for a quicker dragon, but for an enjoyable and challenging PVE experience. Achaean combat has a depth unparalleled by other games, but not everyone wants to be a combatant.

This would be, as far as I know, the first MUD to have something dynamic (for PVE) like this and in my opinion, take great strides towards hooking new mudders. Any new mudder today has most likely played one of the recent day online games at some point or another, and by comparision, the PVE in IRE games is dull.

Here's hoping.

Shirszae · February 2016

I would love if something like this happened, but it is not going to. It'd be to time-intensive to do, and they probably have better things to do for that time. It is sad, but it is the way it is.

Taeltwo · February 2016

Part of the problem is that MUDs just aren't amenable to a lot of the gameplay concepts in graphical MMOs - including many that you're talking about.

It's easy to just say "You could do things like Tank, Puller, Healer, DPS, CC, Debuffer, Buffer as archetypes", but sit down and actually try to work out how all of those things would work.

It's hard to see what everyone is doing at once. It's hard to coordinate multiple people since you can't see things in parallel (in an MMO, you can see the position and some of the state of everyone at once - in a MUD you can only get updated information about them serially). The spatial dimension is a lot more course-grained, so positioning can't be as large an element. The list goes on.

And you're never going to design a system that can't be automated. Text is easy to process. The only reasons that graphical MMOs don't see the same degree of automation are that it's way, way harder to parse the screen and that they require their own binaries that can try to detect client automation.

One thing that I think could be done (and I would assume has been discussed) is working on some areas that require group bashing and Battlerage stuff more. We have all sorts of CC, but there's not a lot of reason to use most of it and we don't have much of the MMO-like enemy design that requires use and coordination of specific CC - where particular strategies and types of CC are a requirement and not merely an option/boost to efficiency. While you're probably never going to get the kind of PvE depth of a game like WoW, there could plausibly be future areas that are a little more like "raids" in that respect. You can also sort of sidestep the PvE problem by making mild puzzle-like mechanics for areas and I know people have talked about proposals for more of those area-specific mechanics too - I remember one proposal for an area that was dark and had people coordinating torch-bearing for various purposes.

It would definitely be neat to see more areas that are more of a PvE challenge beyond "these enemies have a lot of health and hit really hard".

But ultimately, PvE like that is just not where the game's strengths lie. If you want a really strong and deep PvE game, MUDs are probably not the place to look. Thankfully, the incredible depth of the PvP and social and RP systems (far deeper than in any graphical MMO) more than make up for any shortcomings, unless you really are coming into it exclusively for the PvE.

TL;DR: Different mediums have different strengths. Mechanically deep cooperative PvE is not one of the strengths of MUDs.

Nylian · February 2016

Taeltwo said:

[..]

It's easy to just say "You could do things like Tank, Puller, Healer, DPS, CC, Debuffer, Buffer as archetypes", but sit down and actually try to work out how all of those things would work.

[..]

It's easy to say, because with a little imagination, all are possible and could be made functional. Not everyone needs to see everything the other is doing.

In an effort to help spur the imagination, and nothing more, let's go over them - as well as some ideas to reduce chatter. To your counterpoint, because it's text, it can be uniquely adjusted in a way that graphical MMOs can't.

Tank:
Somewhat more obvious, takes the beats. Holds agro and has an agro readout that can be checked with a list of the players on that agro list. The tank could call out when he is pushing agro abilities and call for dps.

Puller:
Mobs are stacked up something crazy, there's no way we can handle all this minotaurs at once! The serpent evades in, snipes one of the minotaurs, and evades out. The minotaur follows. The puller would then play like a DPS class, with less damage, but have the unique ability to see the denizens health which could then be called out.

DPS:
A little more obvious here, deals tons of damage. Base abilities on the mobs health (being more or less effective) and higher DPS causes higher agro, forcing some interaction with the tank.

Healer:
The healer makes everyone not dead. The healer has the unique ability to see the health totals of everyone in the party on a constantly updating basis. This could be easily routed to a gui element to keep track of in both nexus or your client of choice. Maybe expose the GMCP for health of the other characters (keep in mind this wouldn't work in normal areas). Then it's just a matter of AOE heals, direct heals, heals over time, room heals, affliction cures. Such afflictions would only show to the healer and the afflicted.

The list goes on. Limit what others can see to keep chatter down. Group combat is a mess of text because you have 5-10 people doing things, and everyone (arguably) needs to see what's going on. Simply not the case here.

Another idea to reduce chatter would be to make the fight turn based. Make it like one big PVE balance. Everyone sees what the big bad boss will do, and everyone has 3-5s to respond to it. May there's a lot of chatter, but it would be way easier to identify what's going on and react accordingly. All the actions go through, and it's time for turn 2.

I appreciate the fact that "it's not easy" and that thinking out of the box may be required.

To your point about grouped battlerage abilities, I would be happy to see that as well. Anything to encourage challenging group PVE beyond "it's big and it hits hard" is something for the better, in my opinion.

Kiet · February 2016

People would just bring 50 dps and zerg things. To fix that, you'd have to redesign the entirety of pve and not just a few things, and that'd take too much admin time to ever be worth it in a game that is more about politics and pvp interactions.

Nylian · February 2016

Kiet said:

People would just bring 50 dps and zerg things
To fix that, you'd have to redesign the entirety of pve and not just a few things, and that'd take too much admin time to ever be worth it in a game that is more about politics and pvp interactions.

As originally posted, considerations would be needed. Make it so DPS get one-shot in these areas. Make it so you can only bring a max of 5-10 people in. Make it so if there is no tank subclassed in the group a single aoe wipes the group.

Lots of options, lots of considerations to be had.

Edit for Kiet's edit:

I specifically stated in the original post that we can't expect them to rewrite the existing PVE content.

Kiet · February 2016

You'd still have to rewrite pve mechanics for that to work, though. That would make a single area that a fraction of the playerbase is realistically going to use take up many more hours of work than things that could just benefit everyone.

Nylian · February 2016

Kiet said:

You'd still have to rewrite pve mechanics for that to work, though. That would make a single area that a fraction of the playerbase is realistically going to use take up many more hours of work than things that could just benefit everyone.

Certainly possible! Make the rewards worth the risk and the artefact investment required.

Tada. ROI for IRE has been addressed.

How many credits were spent on boats and seafaring lessons after Monster PVE went in?
Let's let the admins decide if it's worth it or not.

Sarapis · February 2016

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

Nylian · February 2016

Sarapis said:

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

And I suppose that's why we'll always be MUD #2.

Thank you for the response Sarapis.

Tesha · February 2016

Bashing just got an overhaul not even a full year ago, there is absolutely no chance they're going to be up for reworking it yet again and introducing archetypes. Or even adding new content specifically for bashing, when they could instead add an entire new area that envelopes much more than bashing. There are a lot of things I'm sure the admin would love to do, but the problem is there aren't a lot of them and time is always an issue, so they have to prioritize. I'd imagine typical mmo-style group bashing would be very, very far down their list of priorities.

Antidas · February 2016

Nylian said:

Sarapis said:

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

And I suppose that's why we'll always be MUD #2.

Thank you for the response Sarapis.

Lol

Atalkez · February 2016

Nylian said:

Sarapis said:

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

And I suppose that's why we'll always be MUD #2.

Thank you for the response Sarapis.

That's not really a fair response.

Wanting to base your business on a model that -isn't- being focused on by other businesses, is..well..good business.

You don't succeed by doing things okay that others do well. You succeed by doing what you do well. Achaea isn't mainly about PvE. Even still, some of the quests are the hardest quests I've ever had to try to do. Have you tried to kill the Grandmaster, or Oberion, or Ugrach?

The recent changes definitely made PvE a lot more fun that it was before, to me.

Sarapis · February 2016

Nylian said:

Sarapis said:

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

And I suppose that's why we'll always be MUD #2.

Thank you for the response Sarapis.

Actually, we were #1 on TMS for years, until soon after the owner of Aardwolf bought TMS, though I think that's actually a coincidence rather than some nefarious plot. The owner is a good guy and I don't think he's cheating. Keep in mind that TMS is simply a traffic exchange. The sole value in being #1 is getting, at least in theory, more out traffic. That's valuable coming from TMS because it's highly qualified traffic, but ranking there has almost nothing to do with the 'success' of a MUD. Dragonrealms and Gemstone are indisputably the most successful MUDs of all time, for instance, and you don't see them at #1 and #2.

It's apples to oranges though. They're a hobbyist game and we're a professional company supporting multiple full-time people. Owning Aardwolf would be of little interest to us, because it's a game people just aren't going to pay for generally. It's fundamentally the same experience you can get in a ton of free PvE games. The whole DIKU model is a loser commercially in MUDs because it's even better when translated to a graphical environment, whereas our model just flat out doesn't work in a scalable game.

Tahquil · February 2016

This runs the problem of 'specialising'. Your debuffers and healers won't be able to go out hunting by themselves unless they have a tank or DPS.

Tank and DPS on the other hand will be a drastically chosen archetype due to the fact that these characters can still go out and solo-bash. There will be 95% of the population picking these frontline fighter archetypes and the other 5% in support.

Battlerage did go in as a thing where while you can still PvE by yourself, however if you chose to group up to take things on you could use your abilities in tangent with other people to support each other.

Szanthax · February 2016

Nylian said:

Sarapis said:

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

And I suppose that's why we'll always be MUD #2.

Thank you for the response Sarapis.

I'll second the lol of this.

Sarapis · February 2016

Sarapis said:

Nylian said:

Sarapis said:

Achaea is specifically designed not to place an emphasis on PvE, because you can go get that in 90% of MUDs and MMOs, due to the design of their classes. That was the idea from day 1, because from day 1 it was clear where the vast majority of games spent their effort.

We're never going to have or try to equal the PvE of games that are primarily focused on it. It's not why people play Achaea.

And I suppose that's why we'll always be MUD #2.

Thank you for the response Sarapis.

Actually, we were #1 on TMS for years, until soon after the owner of Aardwolf bought TMS, though I think that's actually a coincidence rather than some nefarious plot. The owner is a good guy and I don't think he's cheating. Keep in mind that TMS is simply a traffic exchange. The sole value in being #1 is getting, at least in theory, more out traffic. That's valuable coming from TMS because it's highly qualified traffic, but ranking there has almost nothing to do with the 'success' of a MUD. Dragonrealms and Gemstone are indisputably the most successful MUDs of all time, for instance, and you don't see them at #1 and #2.

It's apples to oranges though. They're a hobbyist game and we're a professional company supporting multiple full-time people. Owning Aardwolf would be of little interest to us, because it's a game people just aren't going to pay for generally. It's fundamentally the same experience you can get in a ton of free PvE games. The whole DIKU model is a loser commercially in MUDs because it's even better when translated to a graphical environment, whereas our model just flat out doesn't work in a scalable game.

Also, just to be clear, if we could snap our fingers and make it so, we would, but it is fundamentally incompatible with our PvP model, so it would require creating an entirely new, parallel skill system that only works on mobs (just like most PvP stuff only works on players) but that's definitely not worth it. When you make games, you make choices, and no game can be everything to everybody. It's suicide not to focus.

Nylian · February 2016

Sarapis said:

[..]

Also, just to be clear, if we could snap our fingers and make it so, we would, but it is fundamentally incompatible with our PvP model, so it would require creating an entirely new, parallel skill system that only works on mobs (just like most PvP stuff only works on players) but that's definitely not worth it. When you make games, you make choices, and no game can be everything to everybody. It's suicide not to focus.

This makes more sense than anything else in this thread.

Thank you.

Kiet · February 2016

Nylian said:

Sarapis said:

[..]

Also, just to be clear, if we could snap our fingers and make it so, we would, but it is fundamentally incompatible with our PvP model, so it would require creating an entirely new, parallel skill system that only works on mobs (just like most PvP stuff only works on players) but that's definitely not worth it. When you make games, you make choices, and no game can be everything to everybody. It's suicide not to focus.

This makes more sense than anything else in this thread.

Thank you.

It is literally what I/others here were telling you, based on previous posts by the admins, but you kept saying 'let's let the admins decide that' when they actually have.

When you come with an idea, it's generally not good to be pompous, insulting, and arrogant about it, especially if you don't have a 100% fully fleshed out design where you've done most of the work, imo.

Kez · February 2016

I think this exists on the sea, doesn't it? You've got your tankCommand, healerDeckhand, and dpsWeapons specialisations, anyway.

LHG also presents a different kind of PvE. At least, it's supposed to inspire strategising about how to get through things. It's also supposed to be done in a group of 3-5 from level 70ish and up. Not my fault dragons roll over it the normal way. Adjusting for dragon powerhouses would screw the intended audience out of it, but attempts have been made in the form of creative programming (yanks, crystals, starbursts, and a quickly abandoned graboid).

Mindset is probably an issue here. When I first played WoW, I was always nagged to level up faster because "the game begins at max level" when I was taking my time and enjoying the different areas at appropriate levels. I was also getting my teeth kicked in until I got there (PvP server). In Achaea, max level (dragon) is totally optional. You don't get bent over because you look easy, your level has nothing to do with how hard you hit, and there's no PvE to unlock. It's just its own reward.

Ahmet · February 2016

Tesha said:

they could instead add an entire new area that envelopes much more than bashing.

The winding catacomb better be filled to the BRIM with things that give BUKUS of experience and rip your head off if you mess up, or I'm going to be extremely disappointed.

Nylian · February 2016

Kiet said:

[..]

It is literally what I/others here were telling you, based on previous posts by the admins, but you kept saying 'let's let the admins decide that' when they actually have.

When you come with an idea, it's generally not good to be pompous, insulting, and arrogant about it, especially if you don't have a 100% fully fleshed out design where you've done most of the work, imo.

I'm SOooooOoOOOo sorry I offended you with my opinions. You'll note I didn't say you were wrong, that I was right, or that I knew more than you! I even said it was "Certainly Possible!"

Now all we need to do is get Sarapis some magic snapping fingers so we can all get what we want.

Klendathu · February 2016

Image: http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/353/279/e31.jpg

......

Nylian · February 2016

I'd like to think they'd look like this while he used them:

Image: http://33.media.tumblr.com/f7cc7ae5a7b4b6c81b166aa03d598ac2/tumblr_nuhaw7FPzL1qlgbzbo1_500.gif

Sarapis · February 2016

Nylian said:

I'd like to think they'd look like this while he used them:

Kind of, but if it's an ugly sweater contest we're participating in, and it obviously is, I'm going to dive in way deeper than he has.

Aepas · February 2016

A runewarden is already a tank if you want it. Just team up with them. Not only will they increase your stats and resistances, they can use their battlefury abilities to agument that as well between Bulwark and Safeguard, two great abilities that make it fun to hunt.

I would enjoy seeing each class have a more direct buff to other players similar to Safeguard, but it's not really a big deal.

You can already use most of your existing abilities to fight mobs like this though. Here you go

DPS = serpent, they're pretty insane (some other classes get high dps too, but serpents usually the best)

Tanks = Dragon, knights(defend is amazing), Runewarden (so many runes)

healers = Sylvan, Druid, Priest, Paladin, Jester, Occultist (Tarot, hands, vigour)

Support= Serpent, bard, apostate. (yank, harmonics, fury)

And none of these skills involve battle rage as it is, so we won't even go into stuff like amnesia that CC's an enemy for a pretty long time depending on their attack speed

As far as pulling and aggro goes, that's already there. You simply have to know how the mechanics work. If you're really concerned about using pinshot or something to try and pull a mob, instead of wating for a group of 2-3 to shoot you a nasty emote to know they've aggro'd to you, now you're just getting stuck on what words you're reading when it happens.

I know when I hunt with large groups it's a bit of a chore, setting down runes in certain rooms to keep the health of my allies up, and change my defend ability around while safeguarding whoever might be taking the most hits next to me, or "off tanking" while using bulwark to bolster my own defense.

The battlerage has added a huge step in team focused hunting, and perhaps someday we'll see something that builds off of that a little bit more. As of right now it's a great improvement and the game can pretty much be played exactly as you described it if you bother to use all of your skills and manage to form a party up. Highly artied/dragons skew the skill level of how higher end hunting zones work though, so a lot of times you can just follow a 10k dragon around and not really worry about it. It's not perfect, But it's a lot closer to what you described than you think and it's absolutely not as bad as you think.

Jemaine · February 2016

Aepas said:

The battlerage has added a huge step in team focused hunting, and perhaps someday we'll see something that builds off of that a little bit more.

I'll start by saying I really enjoy the battle rage changes. If not for anything other than cutting down the amount of time it takes to clear an area. I remember when Dragons used to be able to hulk smash zones in no time flat and it was really hard to find any where nice to hunt after a certain level.

Having said that I don't know if alot of effort went into synergizing class battlerage abilities, but if it did I can't tell. Half the battlerage abilities just seem like fluff to me really. I've never been on a group hunt anywhere that had to have a leader say ok you need to use this affliction and soandso will use this ability etc. so we can work together to clear this area or we will all get dropped. I feel like the potential is there for that though. I'm not talking about the cliche tank, deeps, healz combo that mmo's use. I mean just making the battlerage abilities work in sync with other classes so that there would be any real noticeable benefit to hunting with a party. I wanted to also say I have never been involved in honours mob hunts post hunting changes so I don't know if this type of planning is already required for the honours bosses already.

Kiet · February 2016

The battlerage aff combos (like, does extra damage if has x aff, which another class usually has to bring) do a lot of damage per rage spent, so that's a decent incentive.

Matias · February 2016

Jemaine said:

I'll start by saying I really enjoy the battle rage changes. If not for anything other than cutting down the amount of time it takes to clear an area.

This is actually not true, the changes to bashing made every area take longer. A dragon can still rip through stuff faster as they do higher base damage, and have a much higher crit rate.

Jemaine · February 2016

Matias said:

Jemaine said:

I'll start by saying I really enjoy the battle rage changes. If not for anything other than cutting down the amount of time it takes to clear an area.

This is actually not true, the changes to bashing made every area take longer. A dragon can still rip through stuff faster as they do higher base damage, and have a much higher crit rate.

Oops, that's what I meant. I'm glad it takes longer to clear areas now. Dragons can still clear faster but it doesn't seem as bad as it once was.

Melodie · February 2016

Dragon bashing is actually kinda slow compared to many. Like, have you seen a Sylvan or a Runewarden bash? Or a somewhat-artefacted priest? Even serpents, with a few minor additions, bash crazy fast and well now. There's probably more.

I find hunting as an apostate faster, usually. The problem just becomes that I can't tank everything in lesser (Vertani, for instance).

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