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”. So I’m making this post to point out some of the mechanics that fit pantheon perfectly.
Some background, I raided in WoW for about 5 years, and did all the content in the hardest difficulty Mythic (formally known as 25 man heroic mode), my guild was around rank 100 EU. 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 artificial 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.
Things I do NOT want!
1. Focus on mechanics - moving from pixel to pixel doing preset things in a preset order - rather than actually fighting the enemies. I much prefer the focus to be on combat even if the enemies are even harder to handle than the mechanics would have been. Pantheon's focus on complicated combat and smarter enemies gives me hope that boss fights will be more than dancing around clicking things while the boss gets slowly burned down.
2. A lot of one-shot deaths if you make a mistake. Let's focus more on good healing rather than what classes have in-combat rezzes. Of course there will be many deaths but better to have them two-shots where the player and the healers have a fighting chance to use their abilities.
3. Need to read tiny print very very quickly to see what the boss is doing and decide how to counter it. I don't disagree with the OP's opinion about the red circle of death being an unwelcome development over recent years, but then again my vision isn't what it was 40 years ago and better a red circle than a tiny message saying the boss is eating cabbage and will unleash the vasty flatulance of doom if not interrupted within 2 seconds. I can't READ that message within 2 seconds so it might as well not even be there.
First I guess it should be noted that pantheon has stated that content is mostlikely going to be a 20%(solo)/60%(group)/20 %(raid) split, and that group size is going to reamian 6 for the time being. As the game develops, and future expansions are added things may shift. With that being said.
From playing wow for about 12-13 years I just want to say. I left in 2013 only looked back to it because one of my cousins asked me to come back for legion. I stayed in legion for about 9 months, did about two raids outside LFR and left again.
Wow had many great aspects when it came to encounter design, however one shot mechanics, scripted fights and unforgiving death wipes have got to go. I use to love raiding pre-cata, started hateing it more in cata, and completely despised it in MOP. The way that wows raids grew and evloved over time, slowly all the fun out of raiding (for me), and made raiding a time gruling task that I could have done without. Hoenstly if I hadn't made an obligation to my guild as one of their core healers and officers I would have quit after the end of Cata.
I'm not asking for players to be handed everything, however I want a game that requires strategic thinking, requires team work, and has encounters that are more random in nature not scripted. Having the boss do an ability every X amount of seconds and giving players 1 way to react to it, thats not strategic and it gets old. Having one shot abilities are not fun, and having the whole group wipe because one person dies... not fun (unless its the healer or the tank because that is an understandable wipe).
From the little that Ive seen in the streams it looks like pantheon will actually bring back strategic gameplay, vs scripted BS. I would be cool if panteon incorporated some of the different wow mechanics related to how mobs function, but i would advise staying away form the death dot unless group sizes change, and then possible also staying away form share stacking damage unless group size changes. I feel like these mechaincs would force you to take two healers and limit grouping possibilites.
I am looking forward to seeing more of how Pantheon plans to implement the combat system when it comes to bosses. From the little that they have shown it seems to require stratagy and thought rather than just point blank mechanics. However I hope and pray that the oneshot deaths stay out of this game. I left wow because of how tedious and stressful normal raiding content was, I'm not looking for more of the same old same old.
First I guess it should be noted that pantheon has stated that content is mostlikely going to be a 20%(solo)/60%(group)/20 %(raid) split, and that group size is going to reamian 6 for the time being. As the game develops, and future expansions are added things may shift. With that being said.
From playing wow for about 12-13 years I just want to say. I left in 2013 only looked back to it because one of my cousins asked me to come back for legion. I stayed in legion for about 9 months, did about two raids outside LFR and left again.
Wow had many great aspects when it came to encounter design, however one shot mechanics, scripted fights and unforgiving death wipes have got to go. I use to love raiding pre-cata, started hateing it more in cata, and completely despised it in MOP. The way that wows raids grew and evloved over time, slowly all the fun out of raiding (for me), and made raiding a time gruling task that I could have done without. Hoenstly if I hadn't made an obligation to my guild as one of their core healers and officers I would have quit after the end of Cata.
I'm not asking for players to be handed everything, however I want a game that requires strategic thinking, requires team work, and has encounters that are more random in nature not scripted. Having the boss do an ability every X amount of seconds and giving players 1 way to react to it, thats not strategic and it gets old. Having one shot abilities are not fun, and having the whole group wipe because one person dies... not fun (unless its the healer or the tank because that is an understandable wipe).
From the little that Ive seen in the streams it looks like pantheon will actually bring back strategic gameplay, vs scripted BS. I would be cool if panteon incorporated some of the different wow mechanics related to how mobs function, but i would advise staying away form the death dot unless group sizes change, and then possible also staying away form share stacking damage unless group size changes. I feel like these mechaincs would force you to take two healers and limit grouping possibilites.
I am looking forward to seeing more of how Pantheon plans to implement the combat system when it comes to bosses. From the little that they have shown it seems to require stratagy and thought rather than just point blank mechanics. However I hope and pray that the oneshot deaths stay out of this game. I left wow because of how tedious and stressful normal raiding content was, I'm not looking for more of the same old same old.
I have to admit I've very little experience with raiding but I find the red circle in many games being there for a good reason. GW2 for example has great big world boss encounters and you can well imagine how it looks like when 100+ people are all casting and sparkly spell effects impact on the mob simultaneously. There is very little chance of seeing what the mob itself does so it'd be impossible to see the animation when the big one-shot-to-kill-them-all -spell is coming.
I'm quite confident that VR people can figure out different mechanics to signify when and if they will have their raid bosses perform one-shot one-kill moves. I believe in one of the livestreams even, a group member was (totally not ;)!) one shotted and there were only 6 people present. I still couldn't see it coming apart from re-reading the text from the chat box á la "-insert mob name here- begins casting -insert spell name here-". While it doesn't have to be a red circle to avoid, I personally don't mind what the indicator is as long as it is foreseeable somehow. I also don't mind learning as I go, on the contrary, but as long as I don't have to have my character die a few (dozen) times in every encounter until I figure out what the angle is, I'll be happy :D.
My wish here also is that instead of solely staring at the chatbox text fly by I'd be able to figure out what's going on from the graphics on screen, at least partially. For example: "Oh this spell casting move I've not seen before, let's check the chat box for more clues". In order for combat strategy to take place one needs to be able to determine what's going on after all. It will be a challenge to make it work but certainly it can be done :).
One trick to this might be somewhat lessening the sparklefactor on the spell effects so that no red circles are required? I don't know. Who doesn't want to see them when they cast a badass spell, hmm? I find it somewhat taking away from the game to simply turn off the spell animations/graphics when allies cast spells. I kind of like watching them especially since I often choose to play a class that doesn't cast spells themselves. To me it isn't a simple question but I'm glad there are better minds developing the game :D!
@Dorotea
I was hoping for a voice acted line with a big chat bubble like "DIE INSECTS", a noticable animation or even a different music just before the attack, rather than a chat message, I don't wanna have to look at the chat.
Couldn't agree more with the one-shot bulshit, some mechanics are fine, but every single one that's just lazy design, really hope it stays out of the game.
@Baldur
I'm 100% with you on the one-shot, instant wipe, scripted fights, the game went from learning to addapt to the different situations tossed at you by the boss, to follow the DBM and don't **** up a single time.
Encounters being random as opposed to script time events, is such an important part of creating a truly difficult and challenging encounters. One way to keep things fresh and unpredictable is giving a boss a kit of abilities and attacks, an he uses these attacks and abilities on random intervarls of time in a random order, i.e: between seconds 43-78 of the beggining of the fight the boss casts ability X, and then between seconds 91-136 he casts ability Y, and so on, keeping the encounter fresh every single time you do it and random but manageable because you know that something is going to happen just no when or what it is exactly.
The death dots and shared stacking damage are indeed more raid oriented mechanics so they can just choose to not use then in group content, but still if balacing is done right with one healer in mind they can also work.
@Wolftar
Yep it would be problematic if the "big-one-shot" animation couldn't be seen, that's why I hope Pantheon moves away from one-shot mechanics and allows players to screw up and take one or 2 extra hits, this causes the healers to spend extra mana, and if too many screw ups happen healers will run out of mana and the group wipes, as opposed to if you don't move away fast enough it's a wipe.
If i'm not mistaken the one-shot that happened was from a single target spell directed at a squishy mage, no? If he pulls aggro well then, that's his fault XD! Now on a serious not, single target heavy hitting spells I have no proble with, especially if they one-shot squishy low HP players, it's a part of the game and players will eventually learn to pay attention to the enemy casters, because you know they can one shot you, players will interrerupt or CC them. I do have a problem with sudden one-shot AoE abilities that you have to dodge, because that can kill the group or lead to an instant wipe rather fast and unfairly.
Ye I'm also hopping that animations for important spells are noticable and distinguishable, another good indication can be the direction the mob is looking and for important bosses a chat bubble above is head combined with a voice acted line (for those extra special dangerous spells).
>If he pulls aggro well then, that's his fault XD<
I well remember back to the days when this was very true - tanks weren't given overpowered abilities to instantly grab and keep aggro regardless of how much damage a dps did, and a quick or overly aggressive nuker was a *dead* nuker. My early MMO history was DAOC not EQ but I doubt if it was different in EQ. I hope those days return with Pantheon.
Personally, I'd like to see what you've described and more, jpedrote, in normal encounters starting at level 10. Not just raid encounters. There's no technical reason for encounters to be static, and when they are, it leads to boredom.
The perception system could be used to determine the disposition of the mobs you're fighting, before you fight them. Then you can prepare your ability arsenal appropriately.
And to be clear, what I'm describing are: Creatures that are extremely resistant or immune to certain damage types. This means some creatures take 0 or 1 damage from fire, when normally they take 10-20 damage from fire. And the next time? They take 0 or 1 damage from ice. And the next time? They use poison instead of disease. Or piercing instead of slashing. And if you want really challenging combat? Then for long fights, you give them casters that let them buff resistances.
Similarly, if mobs can speak, or in some way communicate, you would think they would warn others. Even if, by their death, they serve as a warning to others, it could be that nearby creatures, especially sentient ones, adjust their own equipment to prepare for your onslaught. Put another way, if you saw all your friends getting mowed down by arrows or fire, wouldn't you erect barriers, put on a shield, wear piercing resistant gear, or put on your asbestos underwear? Sure you would. Divinity: Original Sin has a "warm" state to counter cold effects, as an example, and the ability to set this state on your allies would protect them somewhat if all your enemies started using cold against you.
Then, the perception system can be used to determine not only disposition, but resistances and susceptibilities. Well, they heard us... now they're all fire resistant, time for another approach. Pantheon is supposedly all about players interacting with "The Environment", ok, then this is that. Maybe the other approach is stealth until you move into another part of the dungeon, maybe you have to use crafted consumables that alter your damage type. Maybe certain classes gain symapthetic skills that can alter the damage types of themselves or others, as channeled abilities. Lots of options to increase challenge and difficulty.
Also, I'm well aware that there are ways to implement such a system that would be frustrating instead of challenging and rewarding. For example, if you had creatures adjust their resistances and susceptibilities AFTER combat started, and casters and melee couldn't change damage types DURING combat, this would be an extremely frustrating experience, rather than challenging and rewarding. Similarly, making targets IMMUNE when you can't determine that immunity before-hand or change damage types after combat starts would also be an extremely frustrating experience.
It may be that there is a desire, from a design standpoint, to have raid level encounters shift immunities and weaknesses as script phases. This way, the intent is, multi-group co-operation would be required, as one group would be setup as primarily fire/piercing, or another as cold/slashing and another as disease/crushing, then have the targets cycle through those immunities via Environment effects. Each group in the raid would then be required to step in, while the other teams rest or support them.
As an added depth or horizontal progression mechanic, then, having two damage types available, in a single character, on a single weapon, or a single spell would be a tremendous asset in not having to swap out with another team, but come at the cost of not being as effective in one single damage type. Of course, as mentioned above, consumables, crafting, and sympathetic abilities could fill that role, too.
What's to stop you from intentionally wiping or resetting a fight until you engage it with the desired immunities? Unless they shift in combat on a random or scheduled interval, in which case it's random and you'll plan for that.
After one or two bosses with that mechanic it seems like it would become pretty boring, too. It's not particularly deep, and just about every MMO I've played has had a raid encounter with immunity mechanics.
I'm personally of the belief that EQ2 has some of the better designed raids. WoW raids are certainly harder, but the raids being tailored around addons is my #1 complaint. While people like to reference WoW raids as "dance dance revolution" or some other delegitimizing meme, WoW still has pretty much the most difficult raid content in existence in terms of how inaccessible it is, and how long it takes for top guilds to manage a clear.
I personally think that environmental challenges are a good mechanic, but that is also susceptible to overuse. Raids that split your limited raid force into specialized groups that are too far from eachother to interact can also work. You can't have slackers in an encounter like that.
There isn't really anything revolutionary that's going to happen in raid content design in the current MMO landscape. At best, we can hope the devs take the best aspects of the past 20 years of great games and combine them in a way that keeps things fresh.
Adding more meaningful group content would set Pantheon apart from the pack enough that it might break up to monotony of raid encounter design on its own.
@Liav
It's a real shame what WoW raiding became, in a WoW dev interview stream they said they creat encounters already thinking about the addons players will use....
No doubt raiding top level in WoW is (more than likely) the hardest PvE experience you can experience, but it's hard for the wrong reasons (at least in these last few expansions) it relies to much on artificial difficulty (like one-shots and 0 room for error) , rather than complex and engaging fights, for the most part, when they try really hard they actually make good, hard, fun fights, but it's 1 in 10 bosses per new raid created.
"There isn't really anything revolutionary that's going to happen in raid content design in the current MMO landscape. At best, we can hope the devs take the best aspects of the past 20 years of great games and combine them in a way that keeps things fresh."
Exactly! and I also agree that meaningful group content should be on par with raiding difficulty. also the rewards that come from grouping don't need to be worse than raiding rewards. If half of your best gear slot pieces come from raiding and the other half of the best gear slot pieces comes from grouping (just an example) then these activities will always be relevant.
Yeah, we're on the same page. Fortunately Pantheon will get to avoid a lot of that development hole that Blizzard dug themselves into by just not allowing overpowered addons to begin with.