From a post i made a year or so ago, really fits in the conversation, hope you like walls of text ehhehe.
"Recently saw a post on the Pantheon reedit, talking about encounter mechanics and referring to WoW as a good example of how boss fights should be made. I don’t agree with this, there are tons of great mechanics and concepts that can be taken from wow, but their overall encounter design is based around dance dance revolution, and “one individual mistake = wipe”.
Most of the fights used to be pretty engaging with soft enrages, where you would gradually get overwhelmed by your mistakes (adds pilling up, healers running out of mana because “some” players taking more damage than they should, Hard DPS burn phases that “some” players ignored), but in the most recent expansions WoW raiding took a turn for the worse, it almost completely got rid of the soft enrages, now almost every single individual mechanic that’s failed by a player results in a wipe. So the difficulty went from “learning to gradually deal with soft enrages”, to: “don’t make a single mistake or the fights is over”. I have no problem with an “instant wipe” mechanic, but if all the mechanics are “instant wipe” mechanics, to me that’s just poor design and lazy encounter difficulty.
Now that the rant is over let’s get to the Good and Bad of WoW raiding
Let’s start with the Bad. In its core these are not bad mechanics, but the way they’re implement and the design philosophy behind them, makes them bad, and not appropriate for a game like Pantheon:
- Excessive dodge mechanics – One or two mechanics that force you to move in order to avoid damage or stay alive are great to spice up the fight, but if it’s like WoW where they happen every 10 secs and failing equal a wipe, the game turns into dance dance revolution, we’re fighting a boss not doing a choreography.
- Telegraphed abilities/attacks (aka the red circles and squares of bad stuff you need to dodge) – This, to me, is one of the most disheartening things that happened to videogames in recent years. I remember when you had to look at the enemies animation to see if he was casting a spell or doing a melee attack, you had to pay attention to your environment to determine where the AoE spells or attacks would land, now there’s just a red circle that perfectly outlines the “area of death”, removing completely the need for positional awareness. And on top of this if you get hit by these spells it’s more than likely a one-shot….
- Addons/DBM/Bossmods not a mechanic but a shitty thing none the less – Not going to touch on this much, because VR already confirmed they’re not allowed, but we can all agree that it’s a cancer to the game and difficulty in general, it drastically reduces the need for player communication and good raid leader/shout callers.
- Minor individual oneshot-mechanics that cause raids wipes – Lately in the last 2 Raids from WoW Legion, a trend of simple mechanics that cause one-shots and over-punish causing raid wipe has been creeping up, I already referenced this above and hope these are not a common thing in Pantheon.
Now onto the Good. I’ll divide these mechanics and concepts into subsets, to make it more organized, But in short almost all MMORPGS to date revolve around these mechanics and concepts: Adds, Environmental hazards, Debuffs, Sub-encounters, CC, Movement and Coordination. (And ofc tanking, healing, DPS and CC, but those inherent parts of the game already)
1 - Adds are the bread and butter of most encounters, they can be used to do a million different things and it’s pretty much down to the Devs to create something fun and interesting with them. Normally they’re just something extra do deal with, tank or kill, but here are some of the best things I’ve seen done with adds.
Chasing adds – they choose a player to follow to either explode for AoE dmg or single target dmg when/if they reach him, (lazy DPSer’s please for the love of good switch target and kill them, thank you!).
Empowering adds – they try and reach a destination, if they’re no stopped or killed in time a certain ability, mob, boss, or region becomes empowered.
Linking adds – simple one, they deal more dmg when close to each other (or far away, you decide what fits the encounter), or gain different abilities.
Loot adds – They drop a certain item required to beat the encounter. 100% drop chance, it’s just different way to unlock or prepare for a different phase of the fight.
Turret adds – They deal AoE or single target dmg to the players until killed or de-spawned.
Council “add” fights – Where you begin the encounter fighting against 3+ bosses and as the encounter progresses you either kill them and the ones living get new abilities and empowerments, or you have to keep them all alive and kill them all at the same time or else they enrage when one of their mates is killed.
2 - Environmental hazards – Pretty much anything that deals damage in an area and forces some form of movement, things like rain of fire, frontal cone attack/swings, tail swings, Fire breaths, AoE dmg auras, etc.
3 - Debbufs – Again something that on its core is pretty simple but can have a lot of complexity added on top of hit. Here are some examples of ingenious ways of spicing up Debbufs.
Hug me - 2 or more players get the same debbuff they need to run to each other and hug before the duration ends, if not it deals dmg or something worse.
The bomb – simple as it gets, when the debbuf runs out you explode for AoE dmg, so you’ve got to spread out, so there’s no overlapping damage from players.
Harmful aura debbuf – the player emits a harmful AoE dmg and needs to stay away from other players, or in a twist of this mechanic the player is stuck to the ground and the raid needs to get away from him. (it might also explode at the end of the duration).
Split dmg debuff – The raid needs to stack on top or around a player to split the dmg that said debuff will cause when it runs out.
Trail debbufs – the player leaves a trail of “bad stuff X” wherever they step, so they need to keep moving to avoid dmg (and try their best not to run over the raid).
DoT of death – a really powerful DoT that requires coordinated heal sequences from healers just to keep the player alive.
4 - Sub-encounters (AKA encounterception) – Basically when a small part of the raid (5-8 or more) players gets teleported to another room, sucked into another dimension, absorbed by the Boss, eaten by him or any other unfortunate event, that forces that small part of the raid to fight a different isolated encounter by themselves, until the end of the fight or until the sub-encounter is defeated.
5 - CC – The good old CC, haven’t seen much innovation is this department, (aside from Naxx Razuvious, where you had to mind control his apprentices and use them to tank the boss) but it’s an integral part of raid communication and coordination.
6 - Movement – One of the best ways to keep players engaged in a fight, but only if there’s a small number of abilities that force Player movement, don’t go overboard and turn it into dance dance revolution. This also ties in with raid/group coordination, moving the raid to create stacks of players, or spreading it to avoid aura or AoE dmg.
7 - Coordination – Probably the most important aspect in a Raiding team, coordination is everything, from healer rotations, to tank switches, to CC and focused DPS burn phases, an uncoordinated raid will always fail. Some examples of mechanics that emphasize good raid coordination:
DPS Burn windows – a phase of the fight, add, or weak spot that needs to be DPS’ed as quickly as possible, encouraging players to pool up their resources (mana, cooldowns, energy, etc) to kill it quickly.
Percentage enrages/phases - When a boss reaches a certain % hp something occurs, either it enrages or transitions to a different phase, or summons adds, and it’s up to the raid to coordinated and find the best possible time to make it happen.
Heal rotations – no much to be explained here, but if Pantheon only has party healthbar frames and no raid healthbar frames this will certainly be a very challenging aspect of the game, in terms of coordination.
Final note:
Pantheon is a game that focus on immersion, cooperation, communication, group play and environmental awareness. Because of that, over telegraphed mechanics (aka “red circles and squares on the floor”) that tell you exactly where the harmful meteor is going to land, where the rain of fire is going to fall or where the cleave attack is going to hit, don’t fit the game whatsoever, these abilities should have a random component to where they land, not an exact determined spot. One of my suggestion to replace these telegraphs and still provide a way of alerting player of the incoming dangers, is prominent casting or attack animations that last enough time to be noticeable and warn the players something important is coming, or dialogue lines just before an important cast or attack. This way players might take 2 or 3 hits from the spell or attack in question, as it is intended (remember none of that one-shot bullshit from WoW), but they might also escape it completely if they’re lucky and started moving before the spell/attack landed, this way we avoid a screen filled with flashy lights and red circles of “bad stuff” and instead give the players a reason to pay attention to the game world and their surrounding environment.
All these mechanics can be expanded upon, I’m certain the Devs already know most of what I said and they’ll come up with even more variations of their own, I’m just reminding everyone that WoW has some great mechanics, but makes poor use of them because of their bad implementation and design philosophy, that focus on a completely different type of gameplay from Pantheon, but just because these mechanics are misused in one situation doesn’t mean it’s a bad concept or idea in its entirety, and that’s why they can be implemented in Pantheon if they’re adjusted for Pantheon’s gameplay and design philosophy.
TL:DR: WoW has good mechanics and ideas for encounters, but really poor implementation because it relies add-ons, over-telegraphed abilities/red circles, too much movement (aka dance dance revo) and in recent content too many one-shot mechanics that lead to instant raid wipes.
If Pantheon picks up these mechanics and does their implementation correctly, in addition to the mechanics and ideas the Devs already have in mind, it could very well create the best raiding experience ever seen.
Long post I know, but if you read it until the end post your thoughts on these mechanics and if you would like to see them implemented in Pantheon. Just a side note I don’t want ALL of these in the same fight that would be insane, this is just a compilation of mechanics."
There was a hint or suggestion that once your team got down to the Boss and the team was inside that room..you had to have a key to get in there..and the door locked behind you. Aradune demonstrated that in one of the livestreams...but almost locked the team out behind him. hehehe<
Yes that is pretty much what I was referring to - if not that precise device something with the same results.
I know "instance" is considered a four letter word by many in this community and I entirely agree that a lot of instancing is a very bad thing indeed. But I still see value to (1) allowing some boss fights to be limited to the group or raid that triggered or got to the encounter; (2) providing ways to prevent aggressive players or guilds from blocking important content; and (3) allowing certain stories to be told without other players interfering. There are devices other than instancing that can do each of these things - I care *that* they are done not *how* they are done.
stellarmind said:CanadinaXegony said:I would STILL like to see a raid boss named after Kilsin "Dream Crusher" :)
i'd like a raid boss designed like a pvp encounter with the the vr team.
chris rowan is a druid
braid mcquaid is a warrior
tim sullivan is a ranger
daniel krenn is a wizard
chris perkins is a summoner
ben dean is a enchanter
and the encounter should be impossible, however, not improbable to do. make the little rats think they can beat the encounter then BAM the players get launched (and you hear their laughter)high into the air instantly dying and their body falls towards the closest graveyard.
The problem is, if the devs decide to actually show up "in regalia"? You know high end players would want to try to duel the GM's instantly and if the players win? complain about the pathetic loot the GM's dropped like the uniquley named one time use potion that adds 2 sta or something and demand the GM's "create" something uber on the spot or they'll corpse camp them- and then complain about getting their money back for time lost if the GM's use powers to put them in a time-out room for not playing nice because they threatened to corpse camp the GM's
Some of these ideas are grand in scale and seem awesome. Would love to see some of these, but as it is now I'm thinking VR is going standard with raid encounters. And if they are one simple thing they could do to add a tinge of variety and difficulty is have more than one script/timers on raid mobs.
Currenlty Raids go like this:
You're fighting Kilsin "Dream Crusher"
Attack; count to 45 joust; attack count to 15 cast AoE immunity, count to 30 joust; attack count to 25 jump three times. Rinse and repeat until the mob is dead.
That is always that mob and that gets old after a while.
I think an easy way, like I said eariler, to add a tinge of variety is to give Kilsin "Dream Crusher" 5 routines instead of just 1. We'd eventually figure it out, yes, but at least it won't always be the same routine everytime.