Instance logic . Why it must be boss that drop the item ?

iixviiiix · September 2017

I don't understand the design logic here .
Long ago , i play a Korea game called priston tale and bosses don't drop fixed item , mobs do too , boss only have higher rate to drop stuffs compare to other mobs .

Then back to other game and we see boss camping . Then they create instance so everyone can have boss drops

So the question is , do we ready need instances ?

Specially in those game where 99% of the game is for solo player , why even bore to add forced group contents like instance ?

In first place , instance create many problem , make you harder to check the cheater . Why bore with it ?

cameltosis · September 2017

First, there is the lore angle - the most powerful individuals usually have the most valuable stuff. It might be a treasure horde hidden away, or simply a great weapon that they use. Valuable items were often heavily guarded, so it makes sense from a lore perspective that for us to acquire the best stuff, we have to fight the hardest things. I agree that it should still be possible to find the best stuff elsewhere as well, just with a very low chance. So, I think it makes perfect sense that players must kill the hardest things to acquire the best stuff.

Second, there is the gameplay angle - when most people want to acquire the best stuff, it is important to provide mechanics that give people a fair chance. This is the argument for instances. If you put the best stuff behind open world bosses, the result is boss camping. For most people, this is both extremely boring AND frustrating. If the loot is easy to acquire (thus alleviating the camping/frustrating angle), you devalue the loot and remove a common long term goal. So, instances. The boss and the loot can stay the same, the difficulty can remain high, but now you don't have to worry about competing against tons of other people.

Third, there is the balance angle - everything in the game gets balanced against something. When a designer comes up with a new boss, they have to set it's skills, damage, health etc to something. How do they choose? If this is the best loot, guarded by the hardest enemies, you want it to actually be a challenge. If you put the boss, and the loot, in the open world, then whatever difficulty you set it at can be easily overcome by simply bringing more people. So, shove it in an instance so that you can guarantee the maximum number of people present and then balance accordingly.

Finally, there is the group/social angle, related to balance - some of us like playing with other people! It is the very point of MMOs! But, fine, I agree that having all the best gear locked behind group content is not a good situation to be in for community balance. There should always be multiple routes to the best gear - solo, group, pvp and crafted. Each route should provide slightly different gear so that there is still a reason to get it all. The problem with allowing solo players to get the best gear is one of balance. You want the best gear to be locked behind the hardest content. So, how do you balance the hardest content for a solo player? To do this, all players need to be able to attain the same relative power, but that is extremely hard to do. If you have unique classes with specific roles, it is virtually impossible to achieve solo balance. How do you balance a boss when the person fighting it might be a glass cannon, or a tank, or a buffer, or a healer? This is why the hardest content is usually balanced around groups - it allows the devs to balance the content to be challenging, whilst still allowing classes to retain unique roles and strengths. The alternatives are homogenous classes (which results in boring gameplay and tactics), individually tweaking all endgame solo content so it is balanced on a class-by-class basis (creating tons more work) or by admitting that it's impossible and shifting the challenge to be time/grind based - complete something solo 20 times, or once in a group?

Jemcrystal · September 2017

If I made a game the mobs would drop nothing. You could skin them for their hides tho. I endured camp grief'ing in FFXI (Final Fantasy 11) and it was no fun. In TESO you kill world bosses to unlock an achievement which might get you a dye maybe. I'm okay with achievements if you always get rewarded. But some achieves getting you something and other achieves getting you a pat on the back and "good boy," naw. Armor should be crafted always and never be rewarded as a chest or monster drop. All hail the mighty mmo Crafters! Store npc's should be murdered with a long respawn timer so no one can buy mats from them (why I left FFXIV). All hail the mighty mmo Node Pickers!

As far as instances - Mabinogi you rocked this. Labeling the instances so people could decide which one to be in. Good job Mabinogi. Bad job all the other games who pretend they are magaservers - lies.

Instances are not bad. They should be ready and handy for non-down-time game repairs. Take down one instance at a time and repair it leaving up the other instances so people can keep playing. Reduce game down time for overall maintenance.

Instances should be reduced when player count is low and increased during events and the United States 5pm-11pm central time.

Instances can be very beneficial if you use them wisely.

---

iixviiiix, your English is atrocious. But I am glad you posted. I know it is hard to speak a language not your native tongue. You have done well, iixviiiix.

Sovrath · September 2017

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

You sir, get an awesome.

aliven · September 2017

Sovrath said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

You sir, get an awesome.

And he created recipe for disaster. Nobody would play it. Sadly or not.

Sovrath · September 2017

aliven said:

Sovrath said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

You sir, get an awesome.

And he created recipe for disaster. Nobody would play it. Sadly or not.

Oh, there would be people playing it. It might not be World of Warcraft but there are people who are tired of this "must get phat lootz" system.

Heck, I find myself playing more Conan Exiles than any mmorpg these days.

Cryomatrix · September 2017

Mortal online has similar crafting. If the game had a healthy population, I'd probably be playing that, but then again, i get bored of MMO's.

Cryomatrix

waynejr2 · September 2017

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

While I agree with you, the boss is still dropping items.

MadFrenchie · September 2017

Sovrath said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

You sir, get an awesome.

I agree.

DAoC had crafters that mattered and item decay to prevent the game from being saturated with the best items. It was a great system, and meant that knowing a skilled crafter was a must.

MadFrenchie · September 2017

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

As a jumping off point, and I'm just spitballing: what about also including "delve/dungeon" type quests that allowed teams to carry along the crafter to harvest nodes in a dungeon setting. You could even have the crafter's harvesting trigger an event where the team needs to protect the harvesting player from waves of defending goblins/spiders/whatever drawn by the noise of, say, the crafters mining pick. The nodes might either require a skilled crafter to harvest, or give significantly more for having a skilled crafter harvesting.

Konfess · September 2017

This post is all about making MMOs Solo-able. It is Not about what a Boss Drops, it is about getting Boss Drops with out a group.

This is the Topic Sentence: "Specially in those game where 99% of the game can be done by the solo player, why even bother to add Raid content like instances?"

It's about dumbing down content that some players find too hard.

Scorchien · September 2017

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

This has been done in Horizons/Istaria and to some degree in Ryzom ..It didnt work out great for either ..

I dont think the majority of players only want to ever get Reagents/componets from hunting , its a novel idea that wont work ...........imo

TheScavenger · September 2017

Because developers aren't making a "MM"O experience. They want people to be in co-op sized tiny groups. Even WoW PvP is just co-op sized (battlegrounds/arenas etc). They are more shared worlds than MMOs.

I don't play MMOs to play a co-op game. I play MMOs to be surrounded (even if I don't group) by huge amounts of people, and have the OPTION to be in a huge group.

In GW2, the world vs world has no limit on players. In EVE there can be 1000 people in a system and massive sized fleets (groups). These are far more true to the "MM"O experience than most themeparks that just have co-op groups. Like...I can get a far better co-op experience in FPS games or co-op RPGs or a multitude of games. That isn't why I play MMOs.

Imagine instead of a stupid co-op sized instance (how is that a "MM"O experience?), it was a huge massive open dungeon. 100s of people in the dungeon, maybe 1000s, and at the end is a huge boss (which is VERY hard to kill) that EVERYONE takes part in killing. Now that would be a real "MM"O experience, and how classic MMOs used to do it.

I'd definitely do a dungeon like that, that would be epic. It be a huge open dungeon that isn't instanced, and it could fit countless people in it and there would be multiple dungeons across the world like that. That would make getting the "end" item far better and actually a massively multiplayer experience.

Alcuin · September 2017

I get why the boss drops "the" item, but I don't mind your idea at all. Thinking and doing things differently will yield different results, and some people will think better results.

I don't get why (in most games) the boss and mobs are always in the same spot within an instance. I might make it more random, or at least have several different choices.

waynejr2 · September 2017

MadFrenchie said:

Sovrath said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

You sir, get an awesome.

I agree.

DAoC had crafters that mattered and item decay to prevent the game from being saturated with the best items. It was a great system, and meant that knowing a skilled crafter was a must.

It would be nice if we got that but it won't happen. Cash shops and soloist killed it.

Wizardry · September 2017

I agree OP it does not make sense at all.
it has simply been an EASY system to keep copying,game design has become more about Bosses/raiding and end game loot and nothing more,almost NOTHING a role playing game should be.

When we think about the word BOSS,it usually means someone of higher prominence it does NOT mean they might be wielding a higher tier weapon.Yes in some movies we portray some Kings wearing top notch armor and a golden sword but more often it is the Hero who does.Often the MAKE SENSE part does not,like creatures dropping weapons or armor.

Quite often in mythology we have seen great items protected by a dragon or beasts or by an entire army inside a castle but hardly ever is a Leader/Boss wearing the best loot.Often a leader or Boss is simply sitting at a throne with no items at all or has some powerful creatures protecting him.

We have seen great magical Bows hidden or protected at some shrine by friendly monks,the Golden Fleece protected by a 3 headed dragon,an evil magician that can control Dragons and Fiery dogs/Cerberus so many others but the actual Boss is not usually the powerful item holder.

Jason and the Argonauts,he fought skeletons risen from the dragons teeth,giant Tiger,Scorpions,so many stories can be told without the need for some Boss at the end of a dungeon holding the best loot.It really proves the sheer LAZINESS in game design,everything is rolled out liek an assembly line of clone designs,terrible creativity.

Void425 · September 2017

Another way to look at this is:

Why do they even bother putting trash mobs in dungeons before the boss?

Everyone who can actually stand a chance at taking out the boss is not going to have any issue with these at all. They only provide a time sink getting to the boss.

Not all games are like this, but almost every game the trash mobs are so worthless, thats why they are called trash mobs.

Tuor7 · September 2017

WoW had/has a Dungeon called Dire Maul, and one of the sections in it allows you to kill the current king and become the king yourself. If you *don't* kill the king's main henchmen, then when you become king, the associated tribute chest is somewhat better than if you slaughter everyone on the way to the king. Yes, the king still drops loot, but the best loot comes from the tribute chest, and it rewards savvy playing that avoids killing certain specific mobs on the way. It was a good idea, but I don't think I'd want a lot of dungeons to work that way.

AAAMEOW · September 2017

I find the experience in priston tale and wow completely different. Instance dungeon are usually more technical, the fight are designed so it is beatable by the set amount of people. Priston tale fight don't have much strategy in it.

The problem with open world design is how the fight scale with the amount of people, it is harder to design.

kjempff · September 2017

Today devs want a highly controlled (linear/static) reward system, so they can get optimal carrot chasing with minimal content. This makes for great graphs and predictability, also it is easy to optimize a linear reward system to fit the audience.

RNG has become a system that only work with hardcore players, and not many games target such a specific audience. Of course RNG is more rewarding (for players and devs) in the long run, but too many of the instant gratification crowd and casuals fall off during the dry reward periods.

Loke666 · September 2017

As @cameltosis said: a boss is more likely to own something cool then a regular thug (to simplify it).

And most games still allow regular mobs to drop real cool stuff at rare occasions.

The spawn camping thing have more to do with the regular lazy spawn locations and stupid boss AI that just stands around waiting for players to kill them. There we have room for improvement.

ConstantineMerus · September 2017

Gather a group of adventurers, delve into the depths of a mysterious dungeon, kill a mighty beast from the myths, and loot his legendary sword. That's a narrative a lot of people prefer to any other alternative.

Success and presence of WoW is a living proof of how popular that design is.

I prefer how EVE works personally, so don't shoot the messenger! :P

aliven · September 2017

Sovrath said:

aliven said:

Sovrath said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Personally, if I designed a MMORPG, mobs would only drop materials, or unusable damaged equipment to be recycled if humanoid. Hard mobs like bosses would drop rare reagents for more potent crafting recipes.

And everything would be player crafted, from the armor/weapons up to stat boosts and enchantments. Being a high ranked crafter would mean something again, those adventurers would come to you with their rare reagents to have armor and weapons made for them.

Item would have decay too, but can be partially repaired by a skilled crafter. The higher the quality, the longer the item lasts, but it will eventually have to be recycled and crafted again. The decay would be slow enough on the highest quality items for the player to have way enough time to stock up a new batch of reagents, the system must not be a pain in the ass either.

There would also not be clones, hundreds of players owning exactly the same sword with the same name and the same stats. Every item would be unique.

You sir, get an awesome.

And he created recipe for disaster. Nobody would play it. Sadly or not.

Oh, there would be people playing it. It might not be World of Warcraft but there are people who are tired of this "must get phat lootz" system.

Heck, I find myself playing more Conan Exiles than any mmorpg these days.

Not enough to make it worthwhile. As i said, sadly or not but people arent really interested in having that system (drop material and you decide the best use). There is no WOW moment. System is objectively more fair than random drops but sadly or not people like WOW moments. Whatever they say.

VengeSunsoar · September 2017

That was my experience with istaria/horizons as well. A great many people wanted to adventure. Not having lot meant they really had no reason to adventure.

Finding a rare peice of crafting material became a pain as they would have to find the crafter hope they could pay the price then be totally dependent on that person to do it and basically wait around till it happened. That just wasn't any fun. It became more fun when they finally did have dropped loot.

nariusseldon · September 2017

Konfess said:

This post is all about making MMOs Solo-able. It is Not about what a Boss Drops, it is about getting Boss Drops with out a group.

This is the Topic Sentence: "Specially in those game where 99% of the game can be done by the solo player, why even bother to add Raid content like instances?"

It's about dumbing down content that some players find too hard.

We are talking about games, not PhD qualifying exams. Is there a reason why the game needs to be hard for everyone?

Just put in a difficulty slider, and everything will be fine.

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Instance logic . Why it must be boss that drop the item ?

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Instance logic . Why it must be boss that drop the item ?

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