Idea: Making "Random" Open World Spawns (For rare mobs, resources, ori meteors, world bosses, rare loot chests, rafflebones, treasure maps, abandoned caravans, etc)

General Discussion General Discussion
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It does not curb botting. Bots are automated, 24/7 and can be used in large numbers, now compare that to largely single players, who only have so much playing time to randomly find what they are looking for.

Randomized resource locations = real player game breaking foolishness. I couldn’t be bothered to play NW at all if I could never be sure that going out on a farming run, with luck food, specialized gear, and trophies, and then having to search for nodes, while 5 party teams of bots are living large and getting everything. No, and not only no, but HELL no. For things like special events, sure, but for everything else, no.

If AGS is going to make PvP only servers, then they can just have those servers infested by bots, and remove the trade skills from the characters along with their tool slots, so PvP players cannot gather, refine, and craft, and the bots can do everything.

For human PvE players, with limited playing time, leave the nodes alone, and lock out any computer that uses bots in game, first time and every time.

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Well I think simple bots likely will be disrupted or forced to remain running the static nodes. In theory they could code every single spawn location and have them search each one, it’s not very efficient but could work. Another situation is just camping a general area of checking random nodes along a static node path. With more bots it would become more fruitful but botting I imagine if a race to make back the money they spent on the game before being banned. The less efficient they are the more likely they won’t break profit and less likely they will bot this game and move onto another.

It’s definitely not perfect but would make it more difficult I would think for the non-static nodes? Although my focus is definitely on trying to make this game fun and engaging in the open world and to reward exploration.

Just random thoughts that you sparked

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We have new things to discuss!

1: Tempest Expedition Chests - Literally user this system on a smaller scale in a way (unless I’m mistaken). It’s small but it’s interesting how even this small change has lead players to explore the dungeons nooks and crannies past the first few runs because there game is leaning into a pseudorandom type system. I’ve noticed that the dungeon is split into 4 sections each with multiple spawn locations that the chest can randomly spawn at.

Now why not have the ori nodes, fire more flowers, etc use a similar system? How cool would that be? Also remember we have two very different scenarios when we look at normal expeditions where exploration is more favored and rewarded, while this would be kinda irrelevant in a mutated version where speed and efficiency is more important and people are skipping this for efficiency (where players want to solve the dungeon and not try and explore it again).

One idea to consider is the following. Take all of the chest possible locations and resource locations (plus a ton more added to spice it up) and give them a few important characteristics such as “possible chest 1”, … , “possible chest 4”, etc. You could give them a size characteristic to ensure the large Ori ore nodes fit, while the fire more flowers can fit really in any of the locations. When the dungeon loads have it choose a single node in each of the possible chest 1-4 spots and assign a chest at each of those. Then roll 7 Ori ore nodes at random locations, x fire flowers, y fire lodestone nodes, finally a 2% chance at a rare loot chest, 0.5% chance at another rare mob, 0.5% chance at asmodeum stash chest. Then BOOM! You now have a pseudorandomized dungeon! You added some possible rare spawns that are not always there but reward a player that looks for them. You wouldn’t want to miss it! It’s also not common enough to flood market with whatever the rewards are such as asmodeum as my random example (couldn’t think of something else with value). The dungeon no longer gets completely solved and speed runned unless it’s a mutation that rewards that type of behavior. This is really cool, why can’t we blow this idea up and do it in the open world? Woo?

2: Rafflebones. I’m still trying to understand his underlying spawning system, so I can make a more educated comment on this. So I’ll probably come back to this later. I was told that the spots can be camped? Others have told me that he spawns then wanders around the entire territory until engaged by a player? I’m running if this using a similar system to what is suggested by this post, just that these spawn locations are specific to Rafflebones? It would be the equivalent of a small spawn node (from my system) with the characteristic of “Rafflebones only”? Versus my ideal which is having thousands of possible generic nodes he could spawn on with perhaps spawning at a less specific “mob spawn is safe” characteristic. This could then be used by other future content as well and give a more random feel that there current system. Again I wanna feel out content a bit more before making too much of a comment.

3: Vistas. Static nodes. Perfect for what they are. Chefs kiss. These are an example of something that should not be a pseudorandom node and needs to be hand picked. The locations are gorgeous and satisfying to find and /sit and view for a bit.

4: Random encounter things. Need to explore this a bit. Would love to hear some feedback from people that have seen them. I found a random Varenigan (spelling?) guy and that was it so far. Seemed like a fight encounter. Was mildly disappointed if this was an encounter, or was it a static spawn I had never seen? Was expecting to loot the cart near them or some reward from the encounter. Again waaaaayyy too early for me to comment on this but goal is good rewards because they in theory shouldn’t be able to be mapped and farmed (if you use my system) so would be cool to have some resource rewards or something. Would love to hear more from people.

Overall excited to see where this all goes. The open would needs more love and it and to be moving in that direction. I also acknowledge that this is content AGS likely started months ago, so if they started on some of the ideas generated in this thread. Imagine what months from now may look like! So excited.

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@Kay

What are your thoughts on this scenario? I actually think dungeons are a really cool place to test some of these waters. The new dungeon is a really cool step in the right direction in terms of using randomness to improve the experience. It’s also cool for infinitely many other reasons (seriously it’s freaking amazing).

I’ll also try and update this thread with the new information from this last update, but man has this really sparked some excitement. Especially when we can see that the dev team is experimentimg with more randomness.

Now! Let’s take it to the open world and make this game a really cool unique experience that no other MMO has even come close to touching!

Also plz hippos.

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Will bump this up in the meantime. Really wanna work on this idea a bit more when I have the time. In the meantime would love to hear any and all constructive criticism, thoughts, ideas.

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Been hunting Rafflebones a bit, in a populated server it seems pretty random to me. Ideally I wouldn’t want him to be farmable anyways. Definitely know the spots and know how to cycle between them, but on a populated server it seems that people usually snag him right away and there are plenty of other people hunting him as well. They need to desperately fix the drop so that it’s 590+ for all spawns in high level areas. Sucks to get a drop you can’t use.

Curious what people on less populated severs think? When he was in the PTR with minimal players I believe he was pretty farmable. Anyone else have thoughts?

Honestly think it’s a really nice step in the right direction. There seems like there are a large number of spawns as well. Totally think a more global system sets the game up for success in the future, but the current system of hand placing each random event is another way of doing it as well. More predictable, people can map it out and wander between the spawn locations and get what they want. Seems easier from a development perspective. Just kinda sucks because they could really benefit so much from setting to a system early before the game gets too far into development.

Imagine 20 different spawns, events, random nodes. You set up 130 spawn locations (only 10 locations per territory). That’s 2600 hand placed locations. That’s over 5000! If you do 20 locations per territory. If you do 40 locations it’s over 10,000.

You can see where I am going with this. Double the number of events in the future that’s 20,000. You find yourself 10 years into development and now have 100 different random events. That’s 50,000!!!

When you could do 2,000? or honestly much less initially and then expand later to 10,000, then just have random event tables for each spot.

Now when you create a new territory you don’t have to hand place 20+ different types of spawn locations, you just create a ton of generic ones and all is good.

Just my thoughts. Not only does this make it easier in long run for development but you also have a better product! Right now I can cycle among the Rafflebones locations and farm him slightly. I did that with Turkulon and did that with Gleemite. With this system you would have to cycle ALL of the points. The equivalent of searching the Gleemite, Turkulon, Stinky, Rafflebones, future content 1, … , future content 8 all to find what you are looking for. Which most importantly means, now you go out and explore the world and happen upon random content. This is intermixed with static content. So maybe you are going out to mine starmetal and find all of this along the way.

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Bump!!

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Changing around some images. Don’t mind me.

Just updated the pictures to hopefully illustrate the idea a little better.

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Deserves a bump, for the game to properly mature, we need this randomness.

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Just updated the look of the thread, images per above, and an attempt at a TLDR.

Always down to hear more discussion on the idea! Would love to hear from a dev @Kay and friends about whether or not this is viable in the current system. Feedback on how we the players can improve this or brainstorm solutions to potential issues from a devs perspective.

How cool would it be to have a system like this? Where you can go out into the open world and feel like you are constantly exploring and finding new things beyond your first pass through Aeternum. Finding very rare 0.01% spawns, ores, broken chests, mobs, random events where you can loot an abandoned caravan or find a treasure map that links to a random chest throughout Aeternum. I think the possibilities are endless and this is a way to lean into one of the games biggest strengths and really make this game something unique that other MMORPGS only wish they could do

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I don’t like the idea of random nodes, it makes gathering even more time consuming than it already is. Nodes are already random respawn because you don’t know how long it’s been since it was last gathered. The best thing I think is instanced nodes. It would make for leveling trades faster, more aptitude boxes, more crafting being done etc.

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Yeah instanced nodes definitely have been thrown around on the forums a bit. What I worry about is that they do a few things.

The main thing and I think it’s bigger than people give it credit, and that’s that it greatly breaks game immersion and takes away from what makes an MMO so great and that’s the multiplayer aspect of the game. Instanced content can be important but only in the right quantities and only for certain things. If you made all nodes instanced then you essentially are reducing the game to a single player gathering game where each player no longer impacts the world around them.

Another thing is that it further reinforces finding the most optimal path and sticking to it. Why mine any other route other than the one that gives the most starmetal/hour? You start reducing the world into defined paths and players stop exploring the world.

Finally one thing I do want to mention because this comes up very often and that this idea is not about completely random nodes and this does not replace static nodes. Nodes will have characteristics so your can choose to look for ores in places where they may make the most sense. The spawn tables may be 80% ores in rocky/mountainous areas.

I really took in this feedback early on when coming up with the idea. I understand sometimes a player wants to go out into the world with a specific goal in mind and if it was completely random then that could become frustrating. So static nodes will remain the same with this idea. You still can do an efficient starmetal run and this will not take that away. In fact, I argue it enhances it. You can now find additional ores or other exciting things along your normal route, that often gets boring to run over and over again.

There are actually a few ways I see people engaging in this system.

Complete static node runs

This is for the player that just wants to run their route on auto pilot, maybe chilling and watching a show. Maybe they mapped it out themself or found a guide online that promised x amount of ore per hour. It’s for someone wanting to gather a specific resource.

Mixed static and random runs

This is for players looking to enhance their regular runs and break to the repetitiveness and feet rewarded for it. It’s still for players that want a specific resource. They run their efficient routes but they wander off-path at times searching for random resources, chests, treasure maps, rare mobs, and other potential rewards of exploring. These people often won’t be deviating far from their preset path.

Random run for a specific resource type

This is for people that want a specific resource type but not a specific resource (so want ore but not a specific ore). A player would map out runs into rocky and mountains areas and explore for ore nodes and possibly other rare spawns, maybe stumble upon a rare 0.1% chance chest giving a handful of asmodeum. In this example the static nodes are secondary and mined but the focus of the path is more so on the area type and not based around an already established static node route.

Complete random exploration

This is for players looking to enjoy some exploration and get rewarded for it. Players often running around looking far into the distance, auto running but holding the alt key to constantly be looking around for evidence of a rare mob, rare chest spawn, and world bosses to announce to global. Likely to bring in a ton of resources including rare ones but no specific resources.

As you can see with this system you have so many options. Either look for random nodes to increase your normal yield or ignore them and keep up your current resource gathering gains.

Instanced unfortunately would not give these options and only allow for the hyper efficient runs, that often burn people out

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Chiming in to say for base mats (ores, fibers, magic mot/stone/creatures, etc) no random, please. It would not stop bots, and it would be a crafters nightmare.

However, lots of other ideas in this thread to get on board with. Rafflebones is a good start (though I wish he could not go into water so deep you can’t go after him).

My main reason for wanting to comment here is that I think the world could really use an exploration and associated reward system. I have posted about this before and so have other people in this thread.

And more things like Rafflebonesm please! (who does indeed spawn in known areas but then wanders around, so you still have to hunt him down).

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Yeah has been discussed a ton and I think for good reason. That is why I’ve been adamant about this being in addition to the current static nodes.

I’m curious what you think but, what are your thoughts of having regular resources in the pool of random nodes? You still have your regular runs to gather whatever you want at consistent rates, but now you might get a little more on your runs along the way. The reason I say this is it makes the world feel a little more dynamic without making to too random that it’s frustrating.

Additionally it gives more variety on the lower end of the spawn table.

If it’s (making up these numbers)…
80% common spawns, 15% uncommon spawns, 4% rare, and 1% extra rare spawns. People are definitely going to be looking for the rare chest spawns, rare mobs, and all that but the reality is that they are going to the common things most of the time so giving more variety will help make it feel more diverse instead. There are definitely many complaints of the copy and paste nature of the game at times. This may be one way to make the world feel a little more alive.

Thoughts?

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Perhaps introducing an exploration skill or reward track.

Then I’m wondering if they could make it so it give small amounts of xp when interacting with random nodes and higher amounts when interacting with the rarer ones. This could go towards the exploration skill or reward track. People that focus on instanced content/OPR/Arenas or other things likely won’t get much xp, while people questing/farming/PVP’ing in the open world are more likely to interact with these things and get rewarded.

Wonder what your thoughts are on that?

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Random nodes on top of the existing system works. Perhaps just add nodes ONLY if certain conditions were met like:

  • of people in the area

  • happen more often in places not near shrines/towns/poi’s
  • player has reached certain gathering level milestones
  • different rules based on level of zone
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A number of different ways to go about this.

A skill with associated perks would fit right in with what we have right now. However, points in the world would need to be created to find.

We also have achievements, which currently do not reward tangible items (in some cases, titles). With a little tweaking, this could tie in to a skill and tangible rewards created.

However, what I would really like to see is it be an Exploration skill, with it’s own system of titles and tangible rewards. And some kind of global UI page that shows who found what when, in a kind of ongoing tracking of finding all these cool things.

I would would like to see the gathering system tied into this.

There is so much to see in this game. The outlying areas are not seen by most players because there is no real reason to explore.

Note: The zone paintings idea is a good one! Consider this as a sample test. However, these things should move around.

As for the rewards, they could be
House furnishings
Cosmetic Gear (rare skins)
Unusual recipes
Collections rewards (example: found these 15 different flowers)

I have played a lot of games that have collection systems. Lost Ark is the most recent, and as much as that is a time sink, it’s certainly worth considering. Also ESO has an “antiquities” system, where you dig for loot. These are not quite static nodes. It’s a skill, and regards are tangibles like uber awesome home furnishings, BiS rings (a bitch and a half to get, mind you), gold (in game currency) and so on.

I prefer a less formal collection system, and would rather see rewards for finding hidden POI’s, mobs and NPC’s’.

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My only concern might be how AGS would implement some of these things. I think they are wonderful ideas but I’ve really tried to construct something that could be implemented within the technical limitations of the game. Again I don’t think I have the full answers here and am totally down for any and all feedback.

Specifically I would be worried more about a system that uses the number of players in the area and nearby players gathering milestones. That seems like a more intensive system in terms of spawns changing in real time. The system would need to detect how many players are in an area and constantly be changing the spend near each player. Where are the borders for each area? That kinda thing. Server population being factored in definitely I think could be done though. Another even more complicated thing would be to check each players gathering levels for all of their skills and adjust things live. Imagine 50 people in an area and the load that may have on a server. This is why I feel a system that loads all of the nodes once daily and then only loads new nodes as they are used up, might be less server strain. Although I don’t know this for sure, would love to hear from a dev here.

On the other hand I absolutely see different rules based on the zone and having the nodes less dense near shrines, towns, and POI being easily added into the system! In fact they would be hand placed so you have a ton of control for this and the nodes would have numerous characteristics, one could be the level of the zone. Totally agree here.

Current System:
Just to review the current system, which can absolutely be tweaked with more feedback. The system would have a large number of hand placed nodes with characteristics that help guide what is randomly spawned at the nodes (ie: mountainous areas more likely to have ores, higher level zones more likely to spawn higher level things. These help with immersion and help with making the world feel more predictable but also prevent things from spawning where they shouldn’t). These nodes would have randomized spawn tables based on these characteristics. Another key thing here is that not all of these nodes are active and only a % of them are active at any given time. Both of these combined attributes (random spawn tables for each node and not all nodes being active) makes for seemingly random system that also gives the devs a ton of control. Think of it you can get multiple different combinations of the total nodes (perhaps maybe a million? billion? different combinations, if you only allow 10% of the nodes active at any given time), but also the nodes themselves won’t always spawn the same things, as they have their own spawn tables. These tables include rare spawns (rewarding exploring, but this system prevents them from being predictably farmed). All of the spawns would reset at 5am each day with the normal server cooldown resets. Whenever a node is interacted with and the action is completed (ie: ore is mined, mob killed, chest looted) then that node is inactivated and the server receives 1 credit to activate another node. Shortly later a random node is chosen at random and activated until the server runs out of spawn credits. Each spawn is chosen from among all of the potential inactive nodes on the server. Then a specific spawn is chosen at random from it’s spawn table. So for instance you mine an ore in Windsward from a non-static node, that ore disappears, the server finds above potential node among the 900 inactive nodes in Winsdsward (100 are active, 900 inactive at any given point. Just using example numbers). After this node is randomly chosen it then rolls from the spawn table. If it’s in a mountainous region, then it’s more likely to be an ore. If it’s in a field maybe a fiber spawn. Could be a mob. Could be a super rare chance at a rare drop chest. Maybe a treasure map? This is chosen and then spawned. This continues until 5am when a full reset happens. The reasoning for the full reset is that likely most players are going to selectively mine the good stuff and leave the less rare things. This gives the server a fresh feeling each day.

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@Kay @Aenwyn Any other friends! Would really love some feedback on my current rendition of the system. Any feedback? Any ways I can improve the idea? Anything that stands out as a technical limitation? Anything just a really bad idea? Would love to brainstorm and help with any kinks in the system. Really really feel this would be AMAZING for the game so would love to keep working on it.

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Was messing around with some math. Someone can totally correct me here but let’s say we have 100 potential node spawns that were hand placed by AGS and the server only selected 10 each day to spawn.

That is 17310309456440 different combinations! (Please check my math)

Now imagine if we had 1000 different spawns and we selected 100 to be active at any given time? What if AGS developed this idea over time and eventually reached 10,000 potential spawns? The number becomes incredible but it boils down to the following. No one will be able to predict what nodes will be active at any given time. So players are forced to explore. On top of this, each node itself well be randomized based on a spawn table. This becomes so unpredictable that you can now spawn really rare things without concern that players are going to abuse this system by mapping it and farming it, because they can’t! So you can have a system where players are exploring the vast expanse of Aeternum and finding rare mobs and rare chests amidst many more common spawns and mobs.

Hell even weave in an exploration skill that rewards players that interact with random nodes. Give more xp for those that interact with rare spawns. @Shadow_Fox @Luxendra Gotta win over one of you in this idea! I’ll keep trying!