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  1. #1

    Open world roaming bosses

    I think putting them on a once per day limit will be a mistake. I think if they behave similar to how landmarks behave in the DZ so that people can come up with farming routes etc.

    If they are once per day, they will become a novelty rather than something which will have a big impact on how the open world PvE behaves.

    Thoughts?
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  2. #2
    Yes, once a day is not enough, they would just feel like daily mini-missions where you are like "Oh, have I beaten this boss today already? What about boss x and y?"
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  3. #3
    Totally agree. It would not be something that would make me really walk through the world. I would fast travel to the closest safehous and go at them like with HVTs. Once they're gone I know I don't have to visit this district again because in missions I actually do get the drops. If it's just enough time so I can walk to 3-4 other bosses in some route to then return and go at him again, I would totally go on patrol and enjoy the map. I would probably get less than farming a mission, but it would feal more relaxed and enjoyable than grinding the same procedure over and over again.
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  4. #4
    Maybe make it not time based but amounts of kill based: A boss respawns after you killed x ammount of other bosses. It would really encourage the open-world playstyle where you can have fun and still get gear by just running around in the open world, visiting beautiful places, collecting intel or just going to places you have never been before.

    We would not need the map all the time, we could just look around and decide what place we want to explore... sounds awesome to me because the world really has a lot of places worth discovering we normally never visit because it is not a mission/HVT area.
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  5. #5
    Ubi-gabelikes's Avatar Community Developer
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    Hey, good discussion! My only concern is that a quicker re spawn will just cause people to far the same Named NPCs over and over. Clearing all of them will still take some time and remember that it's not the only activity that will provide loot!

    If anyone else has anymore suggestions or ideas on this please let us know! I will be sure to pass this along.

    /gabelikes
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  6. #6
    Klopzi's Avatar Member
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    What if each district (or zones within district) had a handful of different bosses (named NPC's) that would spawn at random times. Zones/districts could be farmed infinitely if that's how players felt their time was best spent. Each zone/district could have unique, rare drops that might make someone want to farm Hell's Kitchen bosses over Flatiron bosses for a little while before moving on.

    I'm basically looking at games like the Diablo series that allow players to decide how they want to farm and letting them come up with their own farming routes and routines for each gameplay session. Whether a player's ultimate goal is to "tier up" or just have fun farming/playing the Tier 1 open-world forever, random (yet engaging) bosses and random (yet meaningful) loot will allow players to approach The Division from a number of different perspectives.

    Personally, I like the thought of walking through open-world New York and never quite knowing the specific enemies or loot just around the corner. I might know that I'll face looters and that there are X number of looter named NPC's that could show up at any time - but I like having RNG decide how, when, and where I'll face these enemies and what sort of goodies I'll get in the end.
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  7. #7
    Originally Posted by Ubi-gabelikes Go to original post
    Hey, good discussion! My only concern is that a quicker re spawn will just cause people to far the same Named NPCs over and over. Clearing all of them will still take some time and remember that it's not the only activity that will provide loot!

    If anyone else has anymore suggestions or ideas on this please let us know! I will be sure to pass this along.

    /gabelikes
    Since when is the concept of farming in and of itself a bad thing? Farming is how people play these types of games. Even if everything was perfectly balanced and people did random activities, they would still be "farming the game" in a sense to level up. And people use farming to manage their time. They might farm a loop in their preferred activity for an hour, and then go back to base as a group to manage their newly filled inventories.

    It just seems to me like the developers need to let go of an irrational fear of farming and embrace that maybe for some people, running in and out of a safe house to kill the same named boss is the most fun. What would be an actual bad thing is if different activities weren't balanced, which either forces people into 1 activity for maximum rewards, or punishes them for trying to have fun in other activities. Ideally, all the activities should give people similar loot for similar effort. Whether that's through farming Bullet King, running General Assembly, playing with Underground directives, or doing Dark Zone extractions should be up to them. And what's great is that this entire new World Tier system is a massive step in that direction of just setting the world level and letting the player decide what to do.

    It seems to me then that it would be a huge mistake to contradict the World Tier system by limiting activities to once per day because you want to force people to play other activities. They should want to play other activities because they're compelling, not because they have to once their preferred activity is locked out.

    Also, while this is maybe a side concern of lesser importance than what I mentioned above, isn't part of the fun of killing Named Bosses supposed to be exploring the world? At first glance, you might think, letting someone farm the same NPC over and over again would be against that. But I think the opposite is actually true. By making people go from one to the other, a large portion of people's time is going to be spent fast-traveling to and from safe houses, and they're just going to follow the GPS route to every named boss. I think it will actually be more repetitive and linear than using maybe a 20-minute timer and letting someone come back to the same boss after roaming around a bit, perhaps from a different angle. They might find a better vantage point up on a nearby rooftop that way, or perhaps funnel the enemies into a different alley than before.
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  8. #8
    xPLAY3R1x's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Slug_Overdose Go to original post
    Since when is the concept of farming in and of itself a bad thing? Farming is how people play these types of games. Even if everything was perfectly balanced and people did random activities, they would still be "farming the game" in a sense to level up. And people use farming to manage their time. They might farm a loop in their preferred activity for an hour, and then go back to base as a group to manage their newly filled inventories.

    It just seems to me like the developers need to let go of an irrational fear of farming and embrace that maybe for some people, running in and out of a safe house to kill the same named boss is the most fun.
    I agree 100%.

    I just logged onto the PTS for an hour and had a blast... Because the game feels more like a RPG / MMO / Shooter hybrid than when it was launched.

    1.4 is the game The Division *should* have been at launch, IMO. It may have prevented the mass exodus of players, but I digress.

    The main point is MMOs and RPGs are setup to farm

    That's part of the end-game. Players don't mind "grinding" or "farming" for gear IF the farming aspect is fun. Fun may be subjective, but what contributes to fun is...

    1) Emergent (unpredictable) game play

    This is why roaming bosses that respawn on a 20-30 minute timer who drop different loot each time provides replayable content and allows farming in the purest manner.

    2) Reward for time put in

    Tied directly to number one. If the roaming bosses that respawn are on alternating timers of 2-30 minutes, once I kill one and am roaming around the open world, I come across another one, kill him/her and by the time I make my way back over to the first boss, he/she has respawned and we go again.

    This is exactly what Destiny's Patrol mode is in their open world maps on different planets.

    Destiny also has world events which may come later in The Division in the form of Supply Drops, etc.

    3) Wanting to keep playing once you stop for the night / session

    Number three is a direct result of number one and two, combined.

    There are other activities, obviously, but the bulk of an MMO, RPG game comes from farming and as stated, as long as the farming is fun, rewarding and unpredictable... Players will do it because it's the fun of farming itself and not just the loot.
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  9. #9
    If the ONLY concern is players farming the same Named NPC over and over, then make the respawn timer 1hr. This will give incentive to roam a long drawn out route around the map fighting many many named NPCs and by the time they have battled a large majority of them they have the choice of returning to where they started and go at it again. My friends and I have talked about this new system and we are excited at the aspect of having a large PVE area that we can roam around in having fun battles and exploring new areas, but with the thought of having whatever named NPC we come across as a once off per 24hrs feels restrictive of the potential excitement in the gameplay. I feel a 1hr timer is fair to the player and encourages them to expand their gaming experience to the entire map.
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  10. #10
    I agree. 24 hours is ridiculous. Without having tried the PTS or knowing where they are, I'd venture 2 hrs might be good.

    What people will do the way it is right now... in a PUG go through kill all bosses, disband, find another group with a fresh instance and do it again. Or the same group that wants to stay together will disband and reform with one of the other players as leader. PUG players will get frustrated because they will join a group that has killed all but 1 boss, or has all bosses killed and disband.

    Don't penalize solo players (you are already supposed to be avoiding this) and don't make it tedious for grouped players, forcing them to disband and find a leader with the bosses up in their instance.

    How it should be... We should be able to start at Base or Hudson Camp and do a circuit that takes us all through the city, killing mobs and bosses along the way. By the time we get to the last region of the map (near DZ06 East entrance), we should be able to fast travel back to our start point and do it all over again without disbanding and without having to find another leader with a fresh instance.


    Another option is to make it so they will not respawn until all bosses are killed, to prevent the repetitive farming of 1 or 2 bosses. Their should be a boss in every region in the city, so that we can do a circuit. Spawn/pathing locations should be somewhat random so we have to look for them.
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