A significant focus of our Combat & Progression update is to make each individual fight feel more meaningful and engaging. As we’ve discussed over the past few days, that means that the time-to-kill for most NPCs will be increasing, and sustainability and resource management will be more important in combat than they are today. Solo players and small groups will find that they have much more content available to them, while full groups will remain adequately challenged as they push into the most dangerous and rewarding parts of the game.
With the upcoming changes, our vision is that players will be much more likely to team up and form groups naturally since more players will be hunting in the same areas more consistently. However, based on what we have seen so far during Early Access, it is entirely possible for too many players to be hunting in an area and to end up coming into conflict over NPCs as a result. These conflicts end up creating a burden for our customer service team and GM staff, in addition to frustrating players who are simply trying to play the game and progress. Most of the time, conflicts are not intentional. There’s a lot going on within our gameplay, and sometimes it can be easy to miss that someone else has pulled the NPC that you just set your sights on. However, it happens consistently enough that we have decided to try a different approach for determining kill credit.
First To Engage
In the Combat & Progression Update, we are transitioning the majority of our NPCs to use a first-to-engage formula, instead of the current most-damage-done approach for determining experience rewards and loot rights.
Here is what that means and how it will work:
- When you attack an NPC, its nameplate will change from grey to red, signifying that you and your group currently have ownership and loot rights for this target.
- There will be a system of “upkeep” to track whether you continue having that ownership. In order to maintain ownership of the NPC, you or your group will need to continue doing a minimum amount of damage to it within a reasonable time frame. If you stop doing damage to the NPC for too long, its ownership will reset, and another player or group will be able to gain ownership. Note: our goal is to not make this upkeep parameter overly strict, but primarily to avoid situations where contested targets like named and bosses aren’t kited around in circles endlessly while waiting on a group or guild to arrive 5 minutes later.
- If you place yourself in a situation where the NPC has no path to reach you or respond to your attacks, then the ownership will be reset after a short period of time and the next person or group to attack it will gain ownership.
- Some NPCs, such as those involved in dynamic events, world bosses, and other special targets may still use the most-damage-done system to determine who gets experience and loot rights. It is our desire to have targets in the game that are highly and truly contested, to give groups and guilds exciting opportunities to flex and vie against one another. However, most NPCs will use this new first-to-engage approach.
This new approach should help reduce the number of unintentional conflicts that come up over content in the game. When combined with longer time-to-kill, we believe it will make it easier for groups hunting in the same area to coexist effectively.
Named NPC Spawn Types and Spawn Rates
Two of the frequent complaints we hear about content in our game are the scarcity of named NPCs (and the subsequent difficulty players have in progressing their character’s gear via adventuring) and the boredom that can come when named NPCs are always single location spawns. We’re going to wait to talk about specific itemization & loot updates in a later dev diary. For now, we want to focus on named NPC spawn types and spawn rates.
Regarding spawn types, in the Combat & Progression Update, expect to see a larger and more balanced variety in the way named NPCs can spawn:
- Classic place-holder driven camps will continue to exist (with higher chances for the named NPCs at these camps to appear than today.)
- Dynamic or event-driven named spawns (i.e. only at night, while it’s raining, etc.) will become more frequent.
- Zones and POIs will feature more spawns that can be specifically triggered by players with the appropriate actions or items, such as the Burning Banshee in the Smoldering Trenches, or the Grand Illustrator in Black Rose Keep.
- A larger number of named NPCs will be available in general, many of which will have a chance to spawn from any NPC in thematically appropriate areas. This one is important so let’s make it a bit clearer with examples:
- Zthir the Foul in Halnir Cave currently has a few different spawn points. But imagine if Zthir could spawn at any one of the Drawn Ratkin spawn points in all 3 of those rooms and the hallways that lead to them.
- Nydar and Lydra could have a chance of spawning from any of the outcast spawn points in Mad Run or any of the spider spawn points in the Hatchery.
- More guaranteed spawns of named NPCs on longer respawn timers with more complex pathing.
Along with introducing new named NPCs and a greater variety of spawn mechanics, we are increasing the chances for many of our current named NPCs to appear.
All of this goes hand in hand with the tuning changes we are making to all our NPCs, and so smaller or less optimal groups will have a chance to succeed against these targets at the intended level (although many of them will still be very demanding fights).
Our hope is that the combination of these changes will make your adventures more fun and exciting by giving you the chance to encounter and defeat those named opponents without having to participate in multi-day camps to see them.
Tomorrow, we will be discussing changes to our adventuring experience curves and level progression that will be coming in the Combat and Progression Update.
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Join the Official Pantheon DiscordMore from the Combat & Progression Update Details Series
Part One: Overview
Part Two: Unified NPC Templates
Part Three: Combat Formula Adjustments