You win some, you lose some

Games are about winning and losing. Even if an MMORPG is really about socializing and achieving, opportunities to win and lose keep things fresh. So in considering dynamic PvE, there seems to be great potential in shifting from the current area clearing design (pull, pull, pull) to tactical games.

Quests should be tactical games. Capture the flag, fortress, VIP - there are many established games to be tried out. Let's consider base combat as a potential reference game. That is, in a simulated world where factions are constantly fighting, the idea of trying to raid an enemy base seems fundamental. To be simple, we'll consider it in the context of an instanced dungeon crawl. Instead of moving through a sequence of tuned pulls and scripted boss fights, the dungeon acts as a base - with limited resources, fixed defenses and a production pipeline. In one scenario, the player team is tasked to get to the boss. They come in with a set of builds, and here is where levels of flexibility are key - the players need to leverage whatever mismatches they have and stay one step ahead of the base's reactions. They can do this by switching builds and loadouts, hampering production or choking off resources. They can feint towards different objectives and try to get the AI to set up the wrong defenses in the wrong places.

As usual, this is not intended to be a plan, only thoughts on the potential. Base combat is pretty well understood in other genres and provides real depth to an encounter. That's what we should be looking for in our MMORPG towns, dungeons and wildernesses.