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This discussion was created from comments split from: CDP Topic: Rewards & Progression.
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They went kind of "full dps team" trying to figure out how to bypass the volontary lack of a meta-team. And i kind of love that : meta-BiS-team is boring as hell when you are not the first one to deal with the boss and everybody already knows how to defeat him. Brainstorming and finding an alternative strategy because you are out of the "standards" meta/BiS comes as equally satisfying as to be the first team to figure out how to legit beat this one boss on preview.
I don't think they do it more than once or maybe twice (obviously far less efficient than bringing in a meta-BiS [or close to] team I'm sure every of them were able to gather).
Mostly it was just for the lol and the challenge. I don't really see that as an exploit, more kind of an "emergent gameplay" idea (which in a living game like a MMORPG tend to and should be rather quickly patched to no longer being possible, obviously to avoid exploit if there is any). Do rocket jumping, bunny hopping or strafe-jumping in Quake an exploit labelled as cheating in your opinion ?
You can clearly see them not really going all-in at the beginning and hear one of them developping in live the idea and trying to get the others to understand how such a trick may work. They failed multiple times to get it right at the beginning, then the 4 other players had the epiphany. The rest is history. And by the way quite a funny video of Neverwinter
eCC old glitch for the last boss i tried once, back in mod11 i think ? I find it funny, never did it again because it was boring. (Has it been fixed with moving the campfire and some baricades a bit ?).
My bad, I think i misread something :P and make an amalgame between the reason of your post and the Ras Nsi vid ^^ (thinking in english is not so easy for my french head at 1h am xD).
For what is worth, the eCC glitch was also emergent gameplay. Obvisouly, it's up to the devs to decide if it falls in the exploit-category (and should be patched) or the nice strat category (and capitalize on it for future gameplay or game ideas, with countless exemples in the gaming industry ^^), and from a player vue... yeah, some are obvious exploits.
Edit : i personnally loved as a rogue to tp-avoid Cloak Tower first boss cinematic, or through the door before the second one. Made the rAD farming for my alt-rogues army, when i was still lowbie on my main, quite efficient at the era of 36000 rAD/toon-private queue rAD bonus era. 3min30 on average if i remember well.
But I confess having used the "invite in the queue at last campfire" exploit on private runs when we were still able to get rAD from private with my brother, one of us was running the dungeon while the other was afk watching a film only jumping in at the last boss to take the rAD ^^'.
It didn't extend any great advantage to a set of players, was a creative use of the game environment to achieve an end that was fun for all and disadvantaged no one. That kind of dedication, teamwork, and creativity within the world is an ideal situation that should be harnessed for good where it can be.
Chris has stated repeatedly he wants to 'build worlds' with us, and part of building worlds is realizing that the artists intent isn't always the only valuable takeaway. Collaborating with the creativity of your audience can lead to more intricate and engaging content. ..or you can take your ball and go home which has been Cryptics way to date.
Whether or not something like that is an 'exploit' or an 'alternate ending' is completely semantic and irrelevant to the conversation. The basis of the idea that you managed to avoid was that there should be alternative endings, with different loot for different solutions. The capability for different endings already exists within the game, deliberately or not, and could be used creatively by the dev team to expand their tools and rewards without going to the work of creating all new content.
People have been so starved for content in this game they've spent untold hours going through the same dungeons literally thousands of times. Cryptic could actually capitalize on some of the creativity of its users and content creators. How about all the youtube videos spread out over years showing alternative cases.. there could be parkour rewards, all single class rewards, all ranged rewards. Want the standard loot? Take the standard ending. Want the gag prize? kill him with a wooden orb. Kill him while fighting a pinata.
This is free content and rewards generation that are the truly low hanging fruit here without even trying to redesign the game.
...and really, now that I thought of it, I really want that pirate hat with a hole in it. Ill run legions through there, having a great time as soon as it happens. Lets get this built.
I guess they also shouldnt have fixed the bug that let ppl 1shot halaster in ToMM, sounds like another "alternativ ending" to me.
As far as creativity goes, you do not know me, or my life story but I consider myself fairly creative. Unfortunately my art is not so great, but that is another story. It undermined the work of people who defeated the boss legitimately. Defeating the boss legitimately was a challenge, very few people did it. A player with no gear could go into that dungeon and pull the boss outside of the arena and then dump him into the pit. There was no skill involved. Nor was there any creativity on the part of most groups who did this.
You know who was creative? The person who discovered the bug in the first place. Because it took creativity to work it out. You know who wasn't creative? Everyone who exploited it afterwards, because it takes no creativity to mimic the process, it is just following a recipe.
What you seem unwilling to deal with is the fact that you need to be creative within a set of rules. One of those rules is, "the boss is within this arena," and another one is, "anything that 1 shots the boss is probably a bug." See it as a medium of art with a set of limitations. A good artist, within those limitations can still create a masterpiece. Like this for example:
Anyway, Ill address this thought once more, I have another idea I want to post after this, but I think these bits of convo get to exactly what I was intending instead of being so focused on 1 specific. Forest for the trees and all that.
The Halaster 1 shot was possible because he was too easy to facetank as judged by those the devs were using to benchmark. That isn't an imaginative solution using the games environs in complex ways to achieve the goal. Thats just an accounting error that allowed the test-groups spreadsheet to easily add up too large a figure compared to the bosses capability through no creativity of the team.
To that end single phaseing (different than one shotting) bosses pre mod 16 wasn't a bug either IMO. Why? The exact same reason. That wasn't something done by chance or by a normally mixed PUG group. This was content like TONG, CN, FBI, MSP, CODG, or yes even ECC in its day that was still challenging for a lot of people, even while meta groups could waltz in and destroy them. Giving multiple level of players access without any dev resources being expended. One of the above quotes was about pitting the boss in mod 11. Noone needed anything from ECC at that point in time. It was old and obsolete content being run by bored people looking for something to do for no benefit other than running it in creative ways.
That was something that took putting together specific teams, timing buffs, communicating strategy, timing boss CC that could throw off the entire teams rotation. It didn't get on youtube because it was easy or common but because it was an impressive achievement. And even impressive meta groups trying to stream it messed it up and often had to do multiple retakes to get that one impressive vid. As such that activity could have been curbed or encouraged by the use of the 'alternative endings' solution. Devs like that? Do nothing, its self-rewarding. Devs dont like that? You add in a gag prize if the boss is killed in <x seconds, or before x mechanic goes off. Or use another of my ideas and allow kteam style self nerfing with appropriately boosted or chances for good prizes for the extra effort, time, and organizing needed.
Back to the ECC pitting of the boss. There is this feeling being expressed by critics that it was 'easy', when in fact it was not. It was another ending, that often took longer than a meta group would have needed to finish it the mundane way. This was legacy knowledge passed on between players that by mod 11 was simply veteran lore that wasn't useful in any BIS meta way.
This required organizing your group, explaining what the other people had to do. Then sneaking past the boss where the majority of the group would hide. Telling them to stand still while the room goes up in flame around them, and little actions could mean the wiping of the group. Specific classes had to be used, that changed over time. None of the classes that could pull the boss were tanking classes, and hence could not face the bosses power and live. This took knowledge of his mechanic, positioning, and timing to get it right or you would die from his attack or have to reposition for another try at greater risk. Occasionally the really talented people could get it right and finish it in one attempt, far more frequently however it took repeated attempts and concerted effort of the team. It was actually harder in number of ways that just beating him to death, but also more fun.
To that end it is certainly debateable whether it was even treated as a bug or a feature. This was known to high end players for years, back to the times when ECC actually was playable for gear. Over that time it morphed, but remained. Powers and classes that could do it changed over time, but it remained doable. Barriers were placed and an additional shield added to the door. Yet that barrier wan't placed so far out as to make it impossible to pull the boss. It was placed to make it harder. Seemingly a challenge not a fix. Indeed, is there any thematic or mechanic reason to have a spike pit outside that room that players walk over every. single. time? No. Delete those pits and no one would have complained, no changes to the end room would have been necessary, no barrier moves. ..but that was never done.
This was a puzzle that existed within the game and extended the rewarding nature of ECC far FAR longer than the gear was ever considered useful in any way. I remember early on how disappointing this game was to me and to other guildies as we realized how spartan these environs really are most often. Walk forward, poke boss, done isn't creative and isn't sustainable.
Saving all that dev time moving resources around and instead adding alternative endings would have solved this to both groups satisfaction. Giving the rewards the devs feel appropriate while keeping content relevant and fun far longer than its EQ pushed the meta.
Ok. Horse beaten.
Actually in a sense this is also progression, doing things in a different way. Like soloing or duo'ing a dungeon just for the fun of it as rewards are the same you get when running with a regular group and time investment is way higher.
By the way the ECC pull bug/exploit was widely used in mod6 as most groups could not complete the dungeon in the WAI way.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Let's state this first :
- there is no roleplaying reason why this boss should perma-stick in his room (ok, there is an harrow but maybe Blackdagger has the key or the mean to lift it up ? Or maybe he is not so an alcoholic that he can't to be too far away from wine barrels in the room ? Or he is not always thirsty so he can't be to far away from the big water barrel you can use against his "floor in fire" AoEs ?)
- the fact you can drive him right after the glitch immediately into a pit and kind of "oneshot him", though funny, isn't rpobably really a good way to deal with the fight. What can we do for that ? Patch to prevent the boss to go outside the room is solution 1.
But, maybe solution 2, the idea to have a fight outside the locked room, chasing players, can be a fun thing as an alternate gameplay mechanic (like the quest you have to run from a dragon in Maze Engine, but adding a fighting factor in the player retrating/fleeing path).
=> make the Blackdagger hitbox a bit larger, so he can't fall in the pit (or remove the pits/close them after players triggered the anchor leading to the boss)
=> Make his aggro zone huge, so he will never go back to his room after exiting it and keep chasing
=> spawn some mobs behind the players, after Blackadagger has exited his room, so players going backward while kitting have to deal with other foes too.
=> Make his "floor in fire" eternal, no despawn either by time (i think it's around 2 minutes currently before one Fire ground AoEs disappear ?) nor with the big barrel (to avoid one player bypassing the boss while the room is empty and while other are dragging him far away), so Blackdagger is just setting everything on fire in the vicinity and behind him, and you need to retreat to ease the damages pression.
=> Make the dungeon FAIL (no 2nd chance no return to the firecamp) if the party completely wipes
Here you are with a boss fight you can, if you do the trick, deal with while retreating in the dungeon, backward, using environnement to cut lines of sight (though this boss doesn't really have many distant attack ^^'), players setting ambushes at some corners or themselves being ambushed by mobs coming from behind trying to cut of the retreat path.
That's may be an idea about how to capitalize on an emergent gameplay leading to an abusive way to win the fight : prevent the abuse, but build around the initial glitch.
The large blue barrier which supposed to block the boss, and QA lead at the time said they spent 4 hours checking that the boss or players can't get pass it + tried to fix several times (in FBI for example) perhaps could have hinted to that effect.
The fact that people invested more time into explaining an exploit than teaching the actually intended mechanics, doesn't make it an intended mechanics, it just makes an 'interesting' players choice of usage of time, though for many groups it was the easier way to finish it.
Having said that it indeed will be nice that the game will offer more completion paths, and not only the obvious one. Using terrain, environment or class uniqueness.
One example can be an additional corridor in the boss area where a player can jump into or need to go through some obstacles (it need to take time) where at the end, they can activate some timed traps in the boss room, for example expose some spikes for a short duration or set fire, or drop some rocks, if the boss is hit, then it will damage or debuff, or you get the idea.
This for example, offers a less communicative or overpowered group a straight forward brute force approach, just using everyone in the boss room, but it also offers to take the time, wait for one person to reach the room and use the coordination and teamwork to compensate for perhaps lack of personal dps or just make it more interesting if they choose to do it that way.
Such systems take resources into balancing the invested time of a dungeon run, and create the various ideas but IMO it can allow better engagement and interest without the negative aspects of tiered content, like negating the progression path.
(This ofc more fitting the dungeon designs and difficulty level, and not trials)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I would say more towards optional, a balance or tradeoff between a time it takes a player to use some mechanics or instead brute forcing it. In the parallel example, we would disarm the player for using the portal for some set time (for example).
I would say that the ToMM description is a bit oversimplification. Yes it has very set choreography, that a player needs to perform, but it has it's appeal, a group that works towards completion as a group and successful after long period of trying is much more rewarding than a dungeon that can be completed in a couple of hours (or less for some) on first run.
(not exactly to your point, but a side note)
These are creative solutions that not everyone even knows of. They take learning, and knowledge of the game and its mechanics as I and others outlined to work within the environment provided to reach an end goal with obstacles to be overcome in a manner not immediately obvious. That is literally creative. Yes I was specifically remembering back to mod 6 when this solution was in its heyday. It wasn't easier, it was different. If you got in there with a good DC and a decent tank it was no problem. Even better those times when you got a decent GWF that would just eat the boss alive. It was definitely easier, less creative, and definitely shorter for a well armed group to outright fight him than to wait for a group cooperative, knowledgeable, and patient enough to do anything else. I am a pretty harsh critic of bad development and shoddy coding wherever it hides. But even I don't believe that they are so inept in their jobs that these were 'attempted fixes' in any way. The barrier in front of the door moved around several times. ALWAYS remaining in a position where aggroing the boss was possible. Just positioning that barrier parallel to the door and a foot further out would have negged the whole process. Changing the starting position of the boss to stand 5 feet closer to the wall would have disallowed teams from sneaking past, or moddifying his aggro range (which they have done for other mobs). Putting a barrier to standing on the Keg would have kept teams from standing there altogether. Numerous fixes were available. Every single time they chose fixes that weren't just oversights like forgetting a power that could aggro the boss for example, but they instead specifically maintained the functionality.
I fully realize you want to build your little spreadheet, win the day with your meta group, and put your loot on the AH to win the additional million AD you admit you don't need. The point Ive been making is that with tools and history already available within this game there are the seeds to a whole system of creative gameplay for everyeone and rewarding victories that aren't conceived of in that simple old 1 dimensional way of looking at this.
Others are running with the idea and the general possibility seems to have been communicated. I feel the point has been fully made here.. and that further conversation about this specific example is not only 'not seeing the forest or the trees' but not even backing away far enough to see anything but bark.
And if it was easier for most groups to just walk in and fight the boss, they would have done that. The fact of the matter is, it wasn't and people asked specifically for people who could bug it for them in lfg. The groups that couldn't finish it without bugging it did not deserve to finish. End of discussion.
ToNG had something like that, the puzzles. You could either fail them or do them, they were both an optional way to progress the dungeon.
The problem with sneaking to the door lever wasn't in fact sneaking past the Competing Adventuring Party. Two of them were too close to the room exit to sneak past without getting aggro even with stealth, which was why they needed to be pulled out of the room. The problem was sneaking past the enemies in the room after that (hexer and a few gnolls). That's where you needed actual stealth. I remember my group spent a very long time trying other things out before we eventually tried this idea, and it took some convincing.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
The entire of NW is basically an elaborate spreadsheet. I am sorry to say, a spreadsheet that is elaborate enough can do everything a DM can do and more. Here is an example of someone trying to approximate a DM.
Furthermore, tabletop dnd, like mmos, have rules. If you ignored those rules, you would be a poor DM and characters like this could exist within your campaign. That would not make for a very fun player experience, rules exist for a reason. This, funnily enough, is an MMO, not a tabletop game, which means it abides by the rules of an MMO. In these rules, what the player did was clearly defined as an exploit. Its all well and good that you would deem it otherwise in some other game, but this is not that other game.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Now I know that this will come as a surprise and a complete shock. But we are not playing a table top game with a DM here. Video games have this strange and weird thing, called developers, in "theme park" MMOs they have set time to create a predetermined options for players actions. Sometimes they can make many of those, sometimes only one.
In any case, whatever they do, they try to block any activity that breaks the Time vs Gain set by content and a set gating of that content.
Those Devs, unlike a DM are not present during every players play-through, nor can adjust or direct it. Hence we have non-intended behaviors aka "Devs didn't think of that" to "Things the Devs tried to block but players still managed to do".
But to the point:
1. The spikes were not in the arena.
2. There was a specific wall which entire existence was to block the boss from going through it outside of said arena.
3. A group that couldn't finish the content in the intended way via the fire, could complete it by pulling the boss outside of the arena and finish it in a couple of minutes instead of hours trying and failing.
The above will be the same as a DM setting an arena near a river and expressing explicitly that the players may not leave it, the players instead of fighting the boss in the arena, or indeed finding a creative idea, beat the living HAMSTER out of the DM, sending him to the hospital. While he is treated for multiple fractures and getting stitched, picking up the figurine of the boss, throwing it into that nearby river and claiming victory by drowning the boss.
I guess how creative and fun it was will be decided by perspective, perhaps fun for the players (though I wouldn't want to play with those the beat the HAMSTER out of a DM), I guess a bit less fun to the DM who needs a new set of teeth.
For eCC, there is a physical barrier to block anyone (including the player) to get in and out of the final room.
The early version of "trick"/exploit was to use a TR to shadow into the wall, walked through the wall gap (what kind of stone wall has a wall gap?), go to the camp fire side, others aggro the boss to the barrier and then let the TR to aggro the boss. The boss magically teleport through the barrier and then trick the boss to the pit.
After the TR shadow into the wall trick was taken away, a player commit suicide. Re-spawn in the camp fire in the other side and does the same trick to the boss.
If you as a DM allows these tricks, it is a fair game.