Rethinking PvE?

Edric

First of all, this would probably require resources that IRE simply might not have at the moment. But it was just a random thought that occurred to me and I want to see what others think.

When I briefly dabbled with IRE games ~7 years ago, it was obvious why basically all but one of my skills affected only players. Mobs simply didn't have the logic to deal with afflictions, and these could be used to cheese PvE encounters and make them a cakewalk. Anybody who didn't partake in PK missed out on most of their class mechanics.

Now we have Garryn's autocuring, and it is fantastic. Would it be feasible to create mobs that can be targeted like players, and use Garrynbot like any other player would? I don't know what behind-the-scenes stuff this requires. Maybe it's too resource intensive on the servers or something, I really have no idea. But I think it would be really fun if there were mobs that you could fight similar to the way you fight a player.

I can imagine that this has been considered at some point. I'd like to talk about the reasons why people like or dislike the idea.

Sarrius

Aetolia has something like this. Imperian is slowly adding some functions like it.

Selthis

Honestly, I don't want them full on curing, but I do like the  expansion of some afflictions have some effects on mobs.  I think it is a fair compromise.

The one thing I know is that if mobs start healing me bashing, and it gets drawn out more than it already is with potentially more cost  then I'm just not gonna bother and if I need gold I'm just gonna undercut credits on the market for my money.

Khizan

Bashing blows because it's boring and repetitive. 

Making it boring and complicated and repetitive is not going to be an improvement. 

Jules

Selthis said:

Honestly, I don't want them full on curing, but I do like the  expansion of some afflictions have some effects on mobs.  I think it is a fair compromise.

The one thing I know is that if mobs start healing me bashing, and it gets drawn out more than it already is with potentially more cost  then I'm just not gonna bother and if I need gold I'm just gonna undercut credits on the market for my money.

A bit off topic, but I really feel for anyone who's buying credits in this game.  This probably isn't the way to do it, of course, but forcing people to undercut the insane credit market here would probably be a good thing, as much as I get giddy whenever I sell a few of mine - and it is a few, because I'm not sure how people could afford very many, although this game's gold drops give me the impression of being more generous than I'm used to, so maybe it's more balanced than I think.  Although, Jeremy's humorous voting reminder seems to indicate otherwise.

Edric

I didn't really have your everyday bashing experience in mind with this suggestion. Maybe like some kind of miniboss mob introduced for different level ranges. Maybe a practice arena opponent to work as a glorified target dummy. Something along those lines. If Aetolia is already testing out this thing and it's successful for them then we might be seeing it here sometime.

Another random potential use could be tying it in with sects, having a guard at a key shrine or something. Beefy, autocuring, simulating the presence of a somewhat-easy PvP opponent. Just throwing random ideas out here. I know there's been a lot of debate regarding shrines so I don't want to drag that over to this thread.

I'd imagine no mob should heal health, just afflictions. In this case, even if we give every single mob Garrybot powers, bashing would remain 100% unchanged since you just do your damage attack that doesn't afflict anyway. This is irrelevant for mobs you can 3-shot. But it's potentially interesting IMO.

It's not so much whether afflicting mobs is the optimal way of killing them. I just wish I was able to use my skills on them, given that I feel like there's no reason anymore why I shouldn't.

Edit:

Khizan said:

Bashing blows because it's boring and repetitive. 

Making it boring and complicated and repetitive is not going to be an improvement. 

What if we make it less repetitive? What if it's a single opponent that's "harder" to take down but gives gigantic amounts of gold and experience? I know bashing has been like this forever, but what I'm imagining here is an area full of mobs that put up more of a fight, not just DPS race vs a huge damage sponge.

Then again, I don't know combat like you guys do and maybe for some reason unknown to me this concept is ludicrous.

Iniar

Beating a mob is like playing alone. Only a few games are worth playing alone. IRE bashing is definitely not one of them. Sorry bro

Edric

Iniar said:

Beating a mob is like playing alone. Only a few games are worth playing alone. IRE bashing is definitely not one of them. Sorry bro

I agree, I really don't want to play a text version of "Diablo 3 single-player." But when my only method of advancing is bashing anyway because my level is too low and anybody I try to PK at the moment would stomp me, bashing is a necessary evil for a bit longer. I'd like to make it a bit more interesting or varied or *something*. Anything.

Iniar

Do what I did for my alt. code/borrow an auto-basher, hit run and do your work/watch Arrow (hello @Azefel) on another window. Check in every so often so @Jeremy doesn't kick your **** to kingdom-come.

Edric

I think that's good advice for now. And I also think that the fact that I consider that good advice is a strong indicator that something is kinda wrong with the bashing system, hence the proposal.

Eoghan

There are plans for future bosses that include the mob affliction system as strategy conditions.

Edric

Eoghan said:

There are plans for future bosses that include the mob affliction system as strategy conditions.

Awesome! Has this been said by Jeremy somewhere that I missed?

Eoghan

Edric said:

Eoghan said:

There are plans for future bosses that include the mob affliction system as strategy conditions.

Awesome! Has this been said by Jeremy somewhere that I missed?

I don't believe he has mentioned it. Consider it spoilers.

Jeremy Saunders

Yeah. As stated, making bashing more complicated and costly is not fun. What we do want to do is make it so that more (if not all) players skills can be used on mobs and adding more boss like mobs that are more like puzzles to kill.

Khizan

The best thing you could do about bashing, honestly, is cap health/mana gains at L75 while increasing the amount of health/mana gained per level so that the max health/mana remain the same.

This would make it much easier to get into the real PvP levels of health, and it would make it much easier to create bashing areas because you'd no longer have to create areas appropriate for such a large spread of levels, since raw health amounts are one of the biggest determining factor for which areas you can hunt in.

People would continue bashing after L75 for the credits, for gold, and for Aspect, but they'd no longer have to get into the 90's just to get an amount of health that would let them participate in the game.

Edric

Khizan said:

The best thing you could do about bashing, honestly, is cap health/mana gains at L75 while increasing the amount of health/mana gained per level so that the max health/mana remain the same.

I agree with this 100%. As a new player, I've seen a bit of a brick wall in this area. I'll elaborate:

1. Bashing is boring. We want RP and we want PK. The game is coded very heavily to favor both of these.
   
2. You can't be competent in PvP if you're getting two-shot because you're 30 levels below your opponent. I really want to get into it, but nobody is participating because if you're not on the top you're going to get stomped, period.
3. You have to bash endlessly to shorten that health gap.
4. Bashing gets increasingly slower and gives smaller marginal gains. This is terrible, because see point 1. 

I see there's a big effort to capture newbies into the game, and a lot is being done to make the game more accessible. Garrynbot, client changes, quality-of-life improvements like the map. This is awesome. You've got me hooked and spending money on your game. But now I'm stuck where the only thing I can reliably do is bash, and that's not the experience you want to be delivering I'm sure. 

The early-game stage of Imperian is very well done and supported. I'm sure the late-game that most of these forums posters participate in is amazing. The mid game I'm stuck in is quite dull. Maybe it's due to the small population, where there just aren't all that many people stuck in this stage where I currently am. Maybe not. Either way, it's damaging the overall experience. 

I have completely derailed my own thread.

Iniar

@Jeremy - puzzles that bite?

@‌Edric
1. Just be aware that if you're in Fast or something squishy, you're still going to end up being 3-shotted by the artifactos.
2. The big hump is 84 to 92ish. I promise you once your crit rate goes from~20% to ~45%, it'll go a bit faster.

Khizan

Well, Eldreth is a beast and he will three-shot him no matter what statpack he uses, as will Summoner Iniar or Seraphyne or whatnot.

The problem he faces is that skills are balanced around aspect-level health even without artifacts, and so even the non-titans can squash him. Hell, with trans skills, an L60 v L60 fight is eggshells dueling with sledgehammers. 

Iniar

That mental image made me chuckle.

Eldreth

Iniar said:

That mental image made me chuckle.

The part where Khizan implied you were beastly?

Iniar

Eldreth said:

Iniar said:

That mental image made me chuckle.

The part where Khizan implied you were beastly?

Eggshells with sledgehammers

Ahkan

Firstly, it's not like there's a 100 people waiting in the wings to join pk when they have max health. Not having max health has never held someone back from pk. You always see new names in pk that you're like "Who the hell just killed me? Whose side are they on?"

Second, it's not going to instantly make their contributions to pk 'better' by any means. They're still going to get wrecked by the one button offenses the game has class leaded into the game over the years. It doesn't have to be Eldreth. They're still going to get dropped by burst damage like everyone else because they don't have trans minis or evasion. Damage is a more of an artifact-scaling problem and lack of skills problem. This will get more awesome since the beta has high damage weapons scaling off of health. Welcome to 75. BOOM.

I'm not really opposed to dropping max health bar lower, but I think 75 is too low.  80 isn't even that hard. I will admit that Aspect is a steep requirement, but there should be some manner of 'work' to attain full health. I also don't think that max health @ 75 is going to be the cure all that it's being claimed to be, because the actual problem isn't a health issue.

@Edric You're forgetting the credit/lessons gains on the march to Aspect. You can trans a skill from bashing while maxxing out your health.

People are always going to target the small fries first. That will never change. Even with max health at level 75, we're still going to call Edric before the list of pk regulars. This has always been the complaint from lowbie combatants, "They hit me first!" Well, yeah. A stiff wind kills you. That stiff wind is still there with 450 health @ 75 and you're still going to fold under it.

Sarrius

Something boring and tedious should never ever be a necessary evil in a game designed or intended for your entertainment. The game should be about the game, and any work leading up to it should be equally as entertaining as the game itself.

Bashing is about as entertaining as the international championships for watching paint dry.

The lower the bar for entry in terms of max health, the better. I would even introduce it at level 1 because I just don't care about bashing or work or entitlement.

Ahkan

That's not a fair assessment at all. There's a decent population that really enjoys the many aspects of PVE. Just because you don't like something does not make it a 'truth' for the rest of the game. Thank god. Honestly, since Myfanwe has been about, I've gotten back to almost enjoying bashing and taking people bashing (and subsequently getting them killed). It's a pretty solid team-building, camaraderie experience where younger players get to interact and become involve with older players. 

Three has to be some sort of buy in that's related to 'work' (See: WoW, D&D, D3, FTL, KotoR). Levelling mechanics are sort of the backbone of games. Bashing to level 75 is easy as pie. Easier if you have a circle that supports you and involves you in a lot of their bashing trips. I am totally for lowering max hp to level 90 or maybe even 80, but that's as low as think we should go. Anything lower and you're trivializing a lot of things and just exacerbating the "derder pk sandbox" mentality that Imperian has already become (in)famous for. 

Bashing gets people out of cities (so you can pk them at shrines). Bashing gets people to interact with people (so you can jump them for no reason in teams to get pk reasons on all 5). Bashing gets people to explore the world and interact with it (so you can set toll booths with icewalls to bashing areas). Bashing gets people to be worth more xp (so that when you kill them for no reason it gives you more xp). Bashing generates gold so that people can destroy the game economy (and so when you kill them for the aforementioned reasons they pinata and now you have gold). Bashing gets people to buy lessons, credits, and artifacts. I've seen as many people pick up bashing classes as pk classes. Bashing keeps people online when they're not pking (because they have to bash back what they lost in zerg fest). If you don't have bashing, you really lose out on 99% of the reason you pk. 

Something boring and tedious...
As if pk is always exciting? All of the raids and shrine griefing are boring and tedious. The off hours obelisk fights. Yadda. Yadda.  All of the pre testing, theory crafting, and numbers arguments that go on to figure out how to pk and determine new avenues of pk are largely boring. Kudos to the mooches and cookie cutters out there.

Edric

I think bashing serves the purpose of "safe" progression where nobody loses. Not everybody wants to participate in pvp (which makes me sad) so if you remove the sense of advancement from bashing then there is little left for that demographic. Sure, you're getting lessons and credits, but there's a very satisfying feeling to leveling where you go "wow, I couldn't have taken that pack of 4 locusts 10 levels ago".

The existence of bashing is fine. Requiring to bash to 80 to be mildly competitive is sad but understandable. How mind-numbingly boring bashing is, and how long it takes, are two things we might want to reconsider.

It's natural on a multiplayer game where those at max level are opposed to making it easier to get there. But it's something that could contribute to keeping people here.

Edit: on what Ahkan said, I would also be totally for a more group oriented focus during bashing. Unfortunately not everybody wants to group up for some reason, and it can be difficult to find a buddy, let alone a group. Maybe if we gave an experience bonus when bashing in a ring?

Khizan

Ahkan said:

Something boring and tedious...
As if pk is always exciting? All of the raids and shrine griefing are boring and tedious. The off hours obelisk fights. Yadda. Yadda.  All of the pre testing, theory crafting, and numbers arguments that go on to figure out how to pk and determine new avenues of pk are largely boring. Kudos to the mooches and cookie cutters out there.

PK always holds the promise of excitement, imo. There's always a chance that an ordinary boring non-contest shardfall could end with an Eldreth sneak attack, and I've had outpost battles that start as AFK-fests turn into 5v8's.

Bashing, on the other hand, never really holds a promise of excitement; the most exciting thing about bashing is hoping that somebody will maybe try to PK you. 

Edric said:

 Maybe if we gave an experience bonus when bashing in a ring? 

We had this for a while, but the problem was that it became expedient just to grab everybody in the circle up into one giant ring and mow over everything trivially for bigger gains than you'd get for soloing it. This made it faster to level, but it had more negative side effects, imo.

• It made it impossible to ever jump somebody who was hunting, because they'd always be in a massive group
• It removed any semblance of challenge from bashing areas
• The group clear speed was so high that one group could monopolize basically every bashing area in the world
• It significantly outpaced solo bashing in terms of exp gain, so you got more reward for less work.

The end result was basically where I'd be going through Menanon or the like on my own and then a big bashing ring would just steamroller it in 5 minutes and move on to the next area. 

Selthis

Just a note, if you bash with your mentor, you do still get an xp bonus.  So you might want to keep that in mind.  Also,if you have Iron Elite that is another bonus.  There are soulstones as well that you can purchase (doesn't stack with other bonuses besides elite that I'm aware of) And for some achievements you get xp bonuses that you can turn on (HELP ACHIEVEMENTS for relevant syntaxes).  So, its not like there is no bonuses for PVE,they just aren't necessarily the most convenient. 

Khizan

A lot of the achievement bonuses are pretty easy to farm up, too. I went over the list just now and came up with a list of what I'd consider easy to farm exp bonus achievements. Most of these are pretty simple and can either be soloed or require <10 minutes of help from a friend. Some, like the Rafe kills, take a while to get to, but they're still pretty easy/

Feeling Sick - have 5 afflictions on you at once - 3hr
Really Bad Day - 10 afflictions at once - 12hr
Still Alive - 20 afflictions at once - 18hr  *** requires some care in the affliction order***

Pin Cushion - 9 barbed arrows in you at once - 12hr *** Turn off autocuring, watch your health***
Concussion - Cure a concussion - 12hr *** Turn off autocuring, get hit in the head, watch your health***
Insanity - Cure Whispering Madness - 12hr *** NEEDS HELP FROM A SUMMONER ***
Brittle Bones - All body parts mangled, including back - 12hr *** NEEDS HELP FROM A MONK ***

Amateur - win an arena duel - 6hr
Duelist - win 10 arena duels - 6hr
Competitor - participate in 1 combat rankings duel - 6hr
Fighter - win 10 combat spars - 18hr

Forgit Yous - Kill Chur once - 12hr ***get a Knight to defend you if you can't tank it***
Captain Killer - Kill Chur 10 times - 24hr
Vermin Bane - Kill 100 vermin - 12hr
Shortsword - Kill Rafe once - 12hr *** Rafe can be yank-bashed ***
Chafe Rafe - kill Rafe 10 times - 24hr
Pickaxe - Kill Balan once - 12hr *** Balan can be yank-bashed ***
Fallen Balan - Kill Balan 10 times - 24hr

Death by Booze - die from alcohol poisoning - 6hr 

Unpopular - get enemied to one organization - 3hr *** This will get you PKed, almost certainly***

Scout - Visit 50 unique areas - 6hr

Fry - catch 1 fish - 3hr
Goldfish - catch 10 fish - 12hr
Clownfish - catch 100 fish - 12hr

Strategist - Win a game of chess - 3hr ***If you don't know chess, look up the "Fool's Mate" and get a friend to help you***

Delivery Boy - Deliver 100 caravan lots - 3hr *** CARAVANS ARE AWFUL DON'T DO THIS ***

Millionaire - hold 1,000,000 gold - 6hr ***Easy to do if a rich friend trusts you to hold a million gold for a second***

Herbalist - Have 10 each of a list of plants in your rift - 3hr
Herb Hoarder - Same thing, 100 each - 6hr
Veggie Love - Same thing, 2000 each - 6hr
Farmer - Harvest 100 herbs - 3hr - *** Boring, but easy to do even at Inept concoctions if your side has the Nature Obelisk***

Emotional - Use 250 different emotes - 12hr *** Can just spam off of help EMOTIONLIST, doesn't need to be on another player***
Bug Lover - Catch 10 butterflies - 12hr ***Catch a butterfly, wall yourself off in a room, release it, catch it, repeat***
Entomologist - Catch 100 butterflies - 18hr

Sell One - Sell a credit on the credit market - 6hr
Buy One - Buy a credit on the credit market - 6hr

Cavalry Recruit - Win a jousting match - 12hr *** Will need a horse and a friend with a horse***
Tourney Champ - win 10 jousting matches - 12hr

Murderer - Kill one player - 6hr *** Arena kills do not count ***
Killer - Kill ten players - 6hr *** Arena kills do not count ***
Paper Cut - Kill a player with cutting damage - 6hr
Blunt Trauma - Kill a player with blunt damage - 6hr
On The Ropes - Kill a player when you are at <10% health - 12hr
Afflicted - Kill a player when you have 10 afflictions on you - 12hr

Layman - Join a cult or sect - 6hr

Shard Collector - Harvest 10 blue shards - 3hr *** Singles are an easy way to get this without fighting, most of the time***
Shard Addict - Harvest 100 blue shards - 12hr

Shepherd - Tame 10 animals - 12hr *** Capture is at 33% Inept and you can just catch and release wimpy things***
Line Artist - ink 50 tattoos on other players - 12hr ***ink a firefly on a friend, they wipe it, repeat***
Illustrator - ink 100 tattoos on other players - 18hr

Ahkan

PK always holds the promise of excitement, imo. There's always a chance that an ordinary boring non-contest shardfall could end with an Eldreth sneak attack, and I've had outpost battles that start as AFK-fests turn into 5v8's.

Bashing, on the other hand, never really holds a promise of excitement; the most exciting thing about bashing is hoping that somebody will maybe try to PK you. 

Important addition.....For you.

There's enough people in the game that still find PVE quite enjoyable. They even believe PVE is more fun the PVP. PVE pulls more people than PVP. PVP just squawk louder and more incessantly. You can't really push through a change to make PVP more interesting that would reduce/trivialize the enjoyment of the PVE crowd who make up the majority.

Iniar

Could bash to 80 in a day. Probably 90 in 3 days.

Khizan

Ahkan said:

 You can't really push through a change to make PVP more interesting that would reduce/trivialize the enjoyment of the PVE crowd who make up the majority.

Not only can this be done, we have done this many times.

The change to defend was a direct reduction of PvE capabilities solely to make PvP more interesting. Every nerf to tanking ability is a negative to PvE. When Deadeyes was slowed down it was a nerf to PvE and my change to Druid Imbue/Feather was a fairly large PvE nerf. The loss of runes is another example.

It's far more common for PvP concerns to override PvE ones than the other way around.