I killed the wolf pack leader!! Oh, wait, I didn't?

After talking to the hunter in Braemar and hearing about a dangerous wolf pack in Valeway I set out to hunt in Valeway South and fought against this pack of wolves. Then their fierce leader showed up. After a tough fight, I managed to kill him! Someone must be interested in hearing that I vanquished this foe and helped the poor, scared citizens of Braemar, who should now be able to sleep better!

But what is that!? The wolf pack leader suddenly reappeared! Magically he stood in front of me and attacked me again! Did I do something wrong? Maybe I just wounded him? But he was lying at my feet, dead! So I fought him again and defeated him - again.
But shortly thereafter he was back again and attacked me!
I ran back to Braemar to tell the people living there that they will never be safe again! The wolves must surely be some magical creatures that simply cannot be defeated! I talked to the hunter in Braemar to tell him what I just found out and I wanted to tell him that all of the citizens should move away from those horrible creatures. But he just thanked me for killing the pack leader that terrorized the townsfolk. Didn't he listen to me? The wolf pack is returning again and again! They will never be safe! But the hunter didn't care...

THIS is what I mean by not having any sense of achievement with respawning enemies. At least in single player let us kill monsters - especially "bosses" - once and for all so that we get the feeling of achieving something in the world, of changing things, of being able to really help the people!
It simply doesn't make any sense at all to have creatures respawning in single player, this totally destroys the whole game experience!

 

Now, I see what you're saying. And its an awesome idea, one that would add immersion to the game. But, if it was easy wouldn't they have done it already? Keep your fingers crossed for single player OFFLINE

 

Nah they really need to fix things like this in multi-player, too, not just for single-player.

 

I am no programmer but wouldn't it be possible to have different respawn rates according to the mode you play in?
So for example:

Open Online:
- Regular monsters respawn in about 10 minutes
- "Bosses" (quest related creatures) do not respawn unless you are in a group in which one or more players didn't defeat this boss yet.

Friends Online:
- Regular monsters don't respawn as long as the group is in the scene. About one or two hours later, other creatures move into the scene.
- "Bosses" do not respawn unless you are in a group in which one or more players didn't defeat this boss yet.

Single Player Online and Single Player Offline:
- Regular monsters don't respawn as long as you are in the scene. About one or two hours later, other creatures move into the scene.
- "Bosses" never respawn.

 

Darkmoon,

I would prefer no monsters at all respawn while you can visibly see them. They would either have to be out of vision range of any player, or somehow walk in through a scene border in some way. A wolf pack might for instance conceptually walk from outside the scene into the scene. For certain monsters in certain locations, they have added options. For example, spiders in dungeons might come out of cracks and crevices, etc. In some cases, they can come down from trees. But all of this should be seamless and not openly artificial. In most cases, just making sure all respawns are out of visibility range will work. They do a visibility check before they make the respawn.

For 'bosses', keep in mind that one of the tools of this game is Selective Multiplayer; this isn't an MMO. The game can control who comes in the scene with you. There can be two versions of scenes, one without a boss and one with a boss. If you haven't defeated a boss, you might only see players who haven't defeated it, and players who have are excluded from the scene. There's a bit of a complication if another player enters the scene ahead of you and kills the boss before you even see it. They could either let it respawn for you when you re-enter the scene a second time, or do some logic around that. Second, there's also in some cases an ability to make different players see different things. So in one instance when one player sees a wolf pack leader, another might see just a normal wolf.. one player sees it as a boss while another as a normal mob. But its not always going to work, so it can't be relied on, either.

Last, in a lot of cases they should choose to make certain monsters other than bosses not respawn while you're in the scene, just to make it feel like you've cleared the area. In some of these cases, they can respawn later, but only after a set period of time has elapsed after you've exited the scene. For example, a dungeon that gradually repopulates with spiders over a period of a week. Or an elf camp that's been cleared but gets reinforcements after a few days.

 

These would be places where the enemy should appear in an instances adventure area, where only you (and your group) can enter, there is no respawn, and you can't get there unless you've been tasked to do so.

 

This should be possible since the whole game is instancing anyways. The catch is there could be a lot(and I mean a lot) of instances open at any given time.

 

Yep, something people don't always understand is this is one of the reasons they're doing instancing.

 

Personally. I like the respawns. Having to leave a scene or an area to get a re spawn is simply dumb. This isn't the "real" world!!! If you want that turn off SotA and just go outside!!!

 

So having no achievement in the game is ok for you?
You are basically saying it is ok that the quests you get in the game can never be completed.
Go kill the dragon - but it cannot be killed.
This is how an immersive simulated world that should feel alive and believable looks like for you?

 

Yeah... Not sure why they would not have flags of some sort for the things like the wolf leader in single player offline. There would be absolutely no reason for it to respawn. Multiplayer is a little more tricky but as others have mentioned the flag could be used to pick an instance that will not have the leader. Then those that have and have not killed the leader will never be in the same instance.

But then you still could have party members with different flags. A solution there would be that the wolf would be gone if anyone in party had a flag for killing it. Basically someone who had not killed it would still not see it if they was in a party with someone that had. They would have to come alone or with others that have not killed it yet.

As for normal creature spawns... Maybe for some spawns they could make the spawn point have something that the npc could come out of. Like a little den for wolves where they come out of a hole. Also things could spawn from the edge of the scene where players cant go. Kind of like how the deer run into the woods sometimes and you can not follow.

 

They currently have this for certain locations. I haven't seen any respawns happening in the sewers or Ravensmore (unless I just haven't stayed there long enough). Admittedly, re-entering the scene will repop everything, but generally I wouldn't return to a scene like that anyways (if RP) without good reason so the repop wouldn't make much difference.

I wouldn't necessarily do the same thing in the open adventuring areas (woods, swamps, plains, etc) as it becomes annoying when trying to level if you have to put up with load times. I do agree that it might be nice for respawn time to wait until out of LoS or just have a higher timer (like node respawn).

 

He probably has a low respawn timer that needs to be tuned. Like, nbd.

 

Still he would respawn which makes the whole quest pointless. I have to kill the wolf pack leader but actually I can't kill him - ever. Because he respawns later - always. And the NPCs don't react to the fact that the wolf pack leader is still around? This totally destroys the believability of the world, the purpose of the quest and the immersion.

Imagine Luke Skywalker defeating the Emperor but after a few minutes, he reappears. Over and over again.
Or imagine Ned Stark being beheaded but a few minutes later he respawns. The Lannisters would not be amused.
SotA wants to tell a story and create a believable world which both is destroyed by respawning enemies.
And even the wolf pack leader is part of the story. As he is the main antagonist of a quest, a small story that you take part in in the gameworld. You can't tell an exciting story in which everyone is respawning.

 

By tuning I also mean they could turn it off. If they have a generic class for mobs, then every mob should have a respawn timer that could go from real quick to never.

 

Once you kill him the quest is marked as completed in your journal that should be all the satisfaction of completion needed. Nerfing a high level spawn so you can feel slightly better about an npc quest doesn't make sense in any MMO. If you don't like the big bad wolf just ignore him if you see him and just keep reassuring yourself you killed it!

 

Sorry but this doesn't work - at least not in a single player game.
I see it as a huge step backwards if we have to tell ourselves that we accomplished something when the game clearly throws us into the face that it isn't so.
Let's take another example: a big dragon is terrorizing a city and abducts the princess. You are tasked to rescue her and kill the dragon. After you have done this you get your reward but every time you return to the city, the dragon is back again and the princess is abducted again. So basically I can not talk to her about rescuing her and I have achieved nothing. And then I should find comfort in reading a sentence in the journal telling me "Good job, you killed the dragon and rescued the princess"?
In other games the princess is there and she thanks you and maybe the corpse of dragon is lying around somewhere, the people living in the city cheer at you when they see you.
THIS is the sense of achivement I want to get out of a quest.

If SotA wants to be a single player game and tell a story, then there definitely needs to be a sense of achieving something in the world, to leave your mark and to be able to change things. This doesn't work with a journal entry and the player telling himself to ignore the big demon ravaging the world over and over, people screaming, houses burning and happily whistling while walking by burning people saying " Hey I already rescued them!"

 

This makes the difference between story lovers and sandbox lovers I guess. I'm more of a story lover

 

Exactly. But Sota wants to tell a story so they have to find a way to give players a sense of achieving something in the world. And this cannot be done with a journaly entry and people pretendig that things have changed.

If there a are common MMO-respawns in Open Online mode, then ok. No problem with that if MMO-players want this. But for single player the devs definitely need to find another solution.

 

I totally agree.