I was wondering what other people thought about scenarios, mainly boss mechanics that just didn't make sense. Things like something in the boss's room is the only way to kill him, or to cure something he has. For example, the raid boss puts a debuff on you, and the only way to cure the debuff is to stand in a pool of water that is in his room. Or (a specific example from Howling Abyss in ArcheAge), the boss occasionally rages and the only way to bring him out of the rage is to shoot him with one of the harpoons sitting in his room.
These scenarios make no sense to me. Why would something or someone with intelligence (enough to be a boss usually) keep around their own Achille's Heel? Why would the last two bosses of Howling Abyss keep around harpoons knowing that those harpoons do nothing but weaken them? These always kinda broke immersion for me, because they seemed to make no sense.
I know these are done to maybe make it more interesting, or make the players have to think more, but there are more sensical ways to do it. Perhaps there is something else somewhere in the dungeon where you can get their Achille's Heel (another boss who keeps it around in case he wants to take a shot at being the head-honcho), or perhaps the players should need to craft it ahead of time.
Was just wondering what other people thought about things like this.
Ya know, I never really thought about it before, but that's a really good point haha. The first thing that comes to mind is an old raid in DDO called the Titan Awakens. And basically there was a huge warforged construct in the middle of a big room. Along the sides of the room were these massive arcane cannons. If I remember correctly, the mechanics of the raid were that someone needed to power up the cannons, while other people aimed and fired the cannons to knock the titan to the ground for a short period of time. This was on the only time that the titan was vulnerable to regular damage. So during those short periods, the rest of the party would go in an attack the titan until we stood back up. It was a pretty cool raid and definitely took a lot of coordination and teamwork, both of which are important factors of MMOs. But I wouldn't say that it even made us "think" more. That's not the same. It was pretty obvious what we needed to do - it was basically just a matter of getting the timing down, rinse, and repeat until it was done. I think it's much more interesting and rewarding if the players have to bring some of their own ingenuity to the equation to deduce what it is they actually have to do. With any puzzle or problem, the difficulty is determined by how much information the player starts off with. It's much more satisfying if it's not already all laid out for you and you just need to execute it. You should have to figure out what the actual pieces of the puzzle are AND how they all fit together and THEN perform it successfully :)
Cause yeah, now that you mention it, I can't think of a good reason why those cannons were even there in the first place. It doesn't really make any sense. Maybe if I had read the quest text more, it might have explained it, but let's be honest, very few people actually do that lol.