They require that you learn an encounter, execute a plan as a team, and that you stay on your game.
You say adds make encounters less predictable? WHAT!? I know EXACTLY how each fight in this game will play out. It's the same, just as rachel pointed out, because "each role needs to be fulfilled every fight," therefore, you know what to expect every fight.
Also, its not like any of the ideas I posted are broadcasted to you before the encounter. You'd need to figure it out. That's the point and why THEY are less predictable, than say, adds.
The kind of encounters you mentionned are too scripted to be fun after your 10th run or so. When i say that adds makes encounters less predictable it means that not every boss fight will look the same, because you can predict the behaviour of one, maybe two big npcs, but not what a swarm of adds will do. Unless you're a machine. That's not a big variation but still it's a variation and that's enough for me. Scripted boss are just a pain in the ***, it's a chore and not fun. When you know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going to stand in the next 10s then i consider this boss encounter is a fail.
1 is constructive. It means don't create 1 boss encounter and copy/paste it 32 other times. Be creative with bosses, a theme can exist for a specific dungeon. The Spider/Wolf Den can be packed with adds, but a pirate on a ship would have limited crew on board.
Remember that we had a lot of trash prior to each boss. everyone has a roll but what if the Queue doesn't include a roll? I've been in groups where we didn't have 1 of the 5 rolls. I've been in some groups with 2 rolls missing.
My group and I are getting really bored with the same ADD mechanic for every boss. It isnt fun.
No. One is not constructive. If I ask "What would you do differently" you don't say "Well I wouldn't do the same thing!" That's not constructive. It's redundant and dismissive meant to cast aspersions on what we're talking over the changes of. The rest of your post is what we're discussing changing. Going over it, again, isn't constructive. We've outlined the problem: How do we solve it?
I thought Secret World had some of the best dungeon encounter's I've ever seen in a game, especially considering the development challenge of letting your players "design their own class/role". So I find your opinion a little subjective here. I had many happy hours defeating the encounters. Both figuring out how (the group I roll with doesn't look up answers, sorry if yours does), and then getting execution down to perfection. (because something always goes wrong).
That's my idea of fun. I'll understand if it's not yours, but why is your's more valid than mine?
I wasn't speaking on the boss fights. I was speaking on the idea of putting puzzles and riddles and the like in dungeons. Unless they're randomized they'll simply be looked up. Unless they're relatively easy the frustration factor can be incredibly high for a Dungeon Queue group.
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
The primary problem with making boss fights about the bosses rather than about the adds is that control wizards and GWF become useless. GWF single target damage is awful, as is CW. That means that both would be dropped in favor of other classes, due to min-maxing. Especially if there is enrage timers, or timed dodge circles (GWF sprint does not have any invulnerability frames).
I don't think you fully understand what everyone in this thread is talking about. The adds are not entirely the issue here. It's the adds health pools being so large, that ever geared groups with full T2 cannot kill them before more spawn.
Go back to my post and re-read it. My primary suggestion to mitigate add-frustration was to lower the HP of the Adds so that CWs and GWFs can dispatch them, fairly quickly, to allow the striker, defender, and leader to primarily focus on the boss.
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
The kind of encounters you mentionned are too scripted to be fun after your 10th run or so. When i say that adds makes encounters less predictable it means that not every boss fight will look the same, because you can predict the behaviour of one, maybe two big npcs, but not what a swarm of adds will do. Unless you're a machine. That's not a big variation but still it's a variation and that's enough for me. Scripted boss are just a pain in the ***, it's a chore and not fun. When you know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going to stand in the next 10s then i consider this boss encounter is a fail.
Uh adds make every fight the same. I can tell you with perfect consistency what it going to happen in every dungeon fight I run: I, the cleric, am going to carry the group through the whole fight by kiting the untankable adds while healing everyone. Because that is the best strategy in every fight in this game.
Some of those are really interesting. Control locking a boss, on the other hand, is damned hard game design.
All combat is a function of damage over time. Sure there are a lot of different variables but that's what it boils down to. All actor functions either deal damage over a certain amount of time (recharge or animation) or mitigate damage to avoid death.
Dealing damage has different categories, of course. You have burst damage, level damage, single target, and AoE. AoE and Burst damage will shorten the length of time that adds deal damage to a party, extending the period of time they can remain in the fight to outlast the boss. Single Target and level or steady damage are the baseline of the combat, and determine it's initial duration modified by any burst. By a similar method, enemy actor damage upon the party has the same purpose. With burst DPS capable of eliminating weaker players while the "Level" damage output places an unofficial timer on the maximum time the players can maintain the fight.
Damage mitigation, on the other hand, is all about extending the duration of the combat. Healing. Passive Mitigation. Active Mitigation. And Absolute Mitigation all have the function of extending the combat considerably. With a good healer you can mitigate the effects of an enemy burst phase on your squishier characters and reinforce your primary tank considerably. The primary tank will often have high amounts of passive mitigation in the form of defense and damage resistance which the player has no input on and active mitigation in the form of self-healing or "Cooldowns" which temporarily increase their damage mitigation.
Absolute Mitigation, on the other hand, is as it says: Absolute. All other forms of damage mitigation are relative. A percentage of damage dealt is mitigated. A percentage of the player's health is returned. Absolute Mitigation completely stops any damage from occurring whatsoever, effectively pausing the casters's "Encounter Clock" while the target's "Encounter Clock" continues to tick.
The target is prevented from dealing damage to lower their attacker's combat duration sustainability and also prevented from extending their own combat duration. To put it into a simple analogy, it's tripping the competition in a race.
Controlling a Boss gives the Leader time to get everyone up. The tank time to relax and wait on cooldowns and other active mitigation for additional uses within the combat. It gives the striker ample burst-time without needing to avoid harmful effects. In order to retain any semblance of balance, such a boss would need -massive- amounts of increased HP, to offset the targeted burst and it's timing, or large amounts of overall passive mitigation, or active mitigation, which bossses rarely if ever get due to AI limitations, or absolute mitigation.
I'm not strictly against it, mind you. I just think it's really hard to maintain any sort of combat challenge if the players are allowed to reset their encounter clock, more or less, while whittling down the enemy's encounter clock.
-Rachel-
Fair enough, I concede that controlling bosses is difficult to balance. I guess one final point about CW's role is this... As a rogue, I change up to 2 encounter powers, and 1 daily throughout a dungeon. I try to optimize what I can to be the most useful. Sometimes, its more aoe. Sometimes, its more burst. Other times, it is a debuff (thats right, I actually use a debuff on a rogue!). I've appreciated in groups when we decided on a burst the boss strat, and CW's changed their abilities to optimize.
Pandergos, you just summed up my last few random que groups on pirate king perfectly.
Some of those are really interesting. Control locking a boss, on the other hand, is damned hard game design.
All combat is a function of damage over time.
(The rest snipped for brevity)
-Rachel-
You're close. All combat is a function of Damage Mitigation. Damage-per-Second is a form of damage mitigation. i.e if we can kill the boss 30% faster, we have mitigated 100% of the damage it will have done in that time.
Think of it like this, the goal of an encounter is to not die before you defeat the enemy. To that end, resisting more damage, avoiding more damage through avoidance stats and activated dodges (moving out of the way of large attacks), and kill it faster are all valid forms of mitigating the total amount of damage potential in a fight.
However, dungeon encounters have the opportunity to be more than just math, they have the opportunity to factor in Skill of Execution. How well the players can execute a task in order to further their goal (of not dying long enough to kill the boss). Whether that task is avoiding a huge build up to a one-shot AoE by diving into cover, or having enough DPS to kill the boss before a rage timer (or getting pushed off a cliff as the boss slowly advances), or successfully keeping agro/quickly killing lots of adds.
Skill of execution can come in a variety of forms, and that's what the suggestions in this thread are about. Waves of adds are just one form of that.
Dungeon A:
Dev1: How should we make this boss fight difficult?
Dev2: Big adds?
Dev1: We did big adds last time... any other suggestions?
Dev3: Lots of small adds!
Dev 1: Yes, that's what I'm talking about.
Dungeon B:
Dev1: How should we make this boss fight difficult? We already big adds, and lots of small adds.
Dev2: How about spider adds? Cause last time, there were wolf adds.
Dev1: Yes, that will work.
ETC. Some variation of
Timed adds
% based adds
big adds
small adds
inanimate objects that shoot at you adds
melee adds
magic adds
archer adds
Dev1; Anyone got any ideas besides adds?
<room silence>
Best thing I've read all day. I wish more people would make some of these "Example Dev Conversations"
The primary problem with making boss fights about the bosses rather than about the adds is that control wizards and GWF become useless. GWF single target damage is awful, as is CW. That means that both would be dropped in favor of other classes, due to min-maxing. Especially if there is enrage timers, or timed dodge circles (GWF sprint does not have any invulnerability frames).
DONT buy this logic...please! Not everyone NEEDS to be 10000% effective on EVERY fight. That is my point. Some fights can emphasize some roles over others, and just by doing that, you'll get more variation. And here is the kicker....you'll still need every role to progress through the dungeon. I love good add fights. I love watching CW's do their thing, but you don't need to accept the logic that if you dont have 20 adds to control, you're worthless.
The kind of encounters you mentionned are too scripted to be fun after your 10th run or so. When i say that adds makes encounters less predictable it means that not every boss fight will look the same, because you can predict the behaviour of one, maybe two big npcs, but not what a swarm of adds will do. Unless you're a machine. That's not a big variation but still it's a variation and that's enough for me. Scripted boss are just a pain in the ***, it's a chore and not fun. When you know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going to stand in the next 10s then i consider this boss encounter is a fail.
Maybe they are not fun for YOU, but you do not speak for me. Me (and my group of friends) have a blast doing them.
Swtor had a puzzle boss in a raid. someone figured out the mechanics of that fight and created an iphone app to help solve it.
constructive answers can be as simple as "don't copy/paste the same adds for 33 bosses". This could lead to the discussion we're having here. I just hate knowing that all 33 bosses will have adds. We've had some great ideas for boss fights that don't need mechanics to dish out adds. As for each roll, yeah it's taken care of with trash prior to the boss. Also classes could swap out encounters to take down specific bosses. Take the CW, if a boss doesnt have adds then the CW could just swap out some of the CC encounters with more damage ones. Now that role is taken care of. If there are little to no adds the GWF could do the same.
I'd be happy with some of the 33 bosses with much higher HP pool that required moving out of red more often than another boss with add triggers.
Open the Launcher. Click Options near the top. Check Disable on-demand patching. This will download another couple of gigs.
skiter1337Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 15Arc User
edited May 2013
I totally agree with you 100% this great game needs real boss mechanics instead of adds on EVERY fight its terrible... Real boss mechanics aren't hard to think of every other game has no problem doing it (including other FTP). I love this game, I would just love it more if bosses weren't add fest.
If anyone hasn't done the Icespire epic dungeon yet...just love those infinite spawning mobs that recover 5k health every five seconds. Oh, and they don't despawn after the boss is killed.
So. To sum up my position on the matter: I think the add-cycles on most boss fights currently in the game should be kept the same or increased. The HP of the adds within those cycles should be decreased. And further boss encounters added to the game should have more variety of combat. Such as unreachable enemy phases, moving red circles and lines, and things of that nature.
How about a GWF boss who uses Avalanche of Steel to dive-bomb the tank and anyone near him? During that attack you cannot fight the boss while it is in the air, whatsoever, and must flee the shrinking circle of doom before impact.
Or a boss with a lower overall health pool that retreats from combat to recover 1/6th of their health bar the first time they reach 75%, 50%, and 25% leaving the party to deal with their minions and lieutenants for a short while.
Or a boss which has only slow constant DPS applied to the entire party with EXTREME burst DPS phases that can wipe an unwary Defender. Something like Tonberry from Final Fantasy.
Or a New Boss which routinely destroys sections of the battlefield making it a smaller and smaller field of play to dodge and avoid red circles within (That one sounds like a nailbiter!)
Adding new bosses with new mechanics rather than changing the mechanics already extant.
Thoughts on that summation?
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
Damage is not Damage mitigation. It is the baseline combat duration. Damage mitigation has it's own separate role to play within the equation.
I expounded, lightly, on both in my post.
-Rachel-
Damage is Damage mitigation. Think of it like this:
Your average group takes 100 seconds to defeat a boss. During that time, the boss puts out 10,000 damage (highly simplified math for ease). The tanks armor mitigates 25% of that, for a total of 7500 damage. The healer heals 50% of it, for a total incoming damage of 2500.
If a non-average group, with a better than average healer, or tank mitigates more of that, the total incoming damage is less.
Same so if a group with a better than average DPS kills the mob before it has a chance to deal it's 10,000 damage. That potential damage has been successfully "mitigated".
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volkiraMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Rachel - all classes can swap out abilities to fit the upcoming fight. to demand a CW only CC and demand a GWF to only AOE damage adds is just wrong. Both of those classes can do damage that wouldn't compromise their (primary) role. Not all boss fights have to be about the adds. As a Cleric I'd love to have a boss fight where I can actually do some damage, maybe, swap out some healing abilities for more damaging ones. An example of that fight could be the boss is using a shield to guard while slowly moving us toward a ledge. Everyone had to do damage or we'll be tossed off the side.
Open the Launcher. Click Options near the top. Check Disable on-demand patching. This will download another couple of gigs.
Damage is Damage mitigation. Think of it like this:
Your average group takes 100 seconds to defeat a boss. During that time, the boss puts out 10,000 damage (highly simplified math for ease). The tanks armor mitigates 25% of that, for a total of 7500 damage. The healer heals 50% of it, for a total incoming damage of 2500.
If a non-average group, with a better than average healer, or tank mitigates more of that, the total incoming damage is less.
Same so if a group with a better than average DPS kills the mob before it has a chance to deal it's 1000 damage. That potential damage has been successfully "mitigated".
I understand what you're saying. I truly do. But your conflating the baseline combat duration with the modifiers to it.
Baseline combat duration is the Hit Points of the target divided by the amount of -standard- damage a player can throw out at all times and the Reverse, with the lower duration being the combat's actual duration. In a straight comparison that combat duration should significantly favor the Boss while when it comes to minions or open world enemies the reverse is true.
Burst DPS and Damage Mitigation is the variable that -adjusts- that baseline on one side or the other.
I'm not discussing combat in an absolutist sense. I'm discussing it from a game development sense.
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
Rachel - all classes can swap out abilities to fit the upcoming fight. to demand a CW only C and demand a GWF to only AOE damage adds is just wrong. Both of those classes can do damage that wouldn't compromise their role. Not all boss fights have to be about the adds. As a Cleric I'd love to have a boss fight where I can actually do some damage, maybe, swap out some healing abilities for more damaging ones. An example of that fight could be the boss is using a shield to guard while slowly moving us toward a ledge. Everyone had to do damage or we'll be tossed off the side.
You totally missed my summation, huh?
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
Highest I made it was level 12 and I can agree this game is all adds. Even in the quests. The only boss I saw that did anything interesting was karlov or whatever his is name is. He spun around and followed you. All they need to do is take some ideas from WoW's kara. That place had awesome bosses.
So. To sum up my position on the matter: I think the add-cycles on most boss fights currently in the game should be kept the same or increased. The HP of the adds within those cycles should be decreased. And further boss encounters added to the game should have more variety of combat. Such as unreachable enemy phases, moving red circles and lines, and things of that nature.
How about a GWF boss who uses Avalanche of Steel to dive-bomb the tank and anyone near him? During that attack you cannot fight the boss while it is in the air, whatsoever, and must flee the shrinking circle of doom before impact.
Or a boss with a lower overall health pool that retreats from combat to recover 1/6th of their health bar the first time they reach 75%, 50%, and 25% leaving the party to deal with their minions and lieutenants for a short while.
Or a boss which has only slow constant DPS applied to the entire party with EXTREME burst DPS phases that can wipe an unwary Defender. Something like Tonberry from Final Fantasy.
Or a New Boss which routinely destroys sections of the battlefield making it a smaller and smaller field of play to dodge and avoid red circles within (That one sounds like a nailbiter!)
Adding new bosses with new mechanics rather than changing the mechanics already extant.
Thoughts on that summation?
-Rachel-
I love those suggestions. Lots of good ideas in this thread. That floor collapsing one is awesome. Reminds me of a fight in EQ2 that was on a giant grid with sections of the floor that would fall away.
Damage is Damage mitigation. Think of it like this:
Your average group takes 100 seconds to defeat a boss. During that time, the boss puts out 10,000 damage (highly simplified math for ease). The tanks armor mitigates 25% of that, for a total of 7500 damage. The healer heals 50% of it, for a total incoming damage of 2500.
If a non-average group, with a better than average healer, or tank mitigates more of that, the total incoming damage is less.
Same so if a group with a better than average DPS kills the mob before it has a chance to deal it's 10,000 damage. That potential damage has been successfully "mitigated".
Here's another (better) way to think about Damage as Damage mitigation:
If you aren't hitting the mob back, do you have any chance of killing it before it kills you? No, it's potential damage at that point is infinite. Any damage you do reduces the timeline of incoming damage, therefore limiting it's potential damage output. The faster you deal damage to it, the lower it's timeline gets, vastly lowering the potential incoming damage.
The kind of encounters you mentionned are too scripted to be fun after your 10th run or so. When i say that adds makes encounters less predictable it means that not every boss fight will look the same, because you can predict the behaviour of one, maybe two big npcs, but not what a swarm of adds will do. Unless you're a machine. That's not a big variation but still it's a variation and that's enough for me. Scripted boss are just a pain in the ***, it's a chore and not fun. When you know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going to stand in the next 10s then i consider this boss encounter is a fail.
No encounter is fun after the xth time; farming usually isn't.
However, when you have many different types of encounters and you rotate around them, you get variation. The encounters within Neverwinter are all EXACTLY the same, with different models and different rooms. You are partially right that you might not know exactly what a group of adds will do, but you know what what they will do comes from a very limited subset of options (they attack the tank who gets aggro on them, or they attack the healer).
Furthermore, this type of randomness actually doesn't add to the feeling of randomness like you imply it does. When you have a boss that can choose between 5 or 6 abilities, but you can grasp the difference between the abilities so that every option is discrete and concrete within your head, which one it uses feels random. But, when you have 5-6 mobs on the screen and they are all acting independantly, the same is not true. In that case, it is both utterly chaotic and at the same time entirely unimportant what each discrete mob action is; it doesn't change your response.
If you roll 3 die, you can discern and track each dice, and in doing so, you think about each result, and given a list of reponses based on the rolls, you could react differently. However, if you took a handful of 20 die and rolled, each dice loses its focus, it becomes just one in a pile that bears no individual significance. This is what spamming adds does to a boss fight; the bosses totally lose their identities in the swarms of adds.
To TL:DR it, too much randomness added through adds to a fight both:
1. De-emphasizes each individual element of the fight (whether that element is a mob, or a mechanic, or whatever), and,
2. Necessitates each element to be less discerete and more generic since the players can't react to each as a discrete entity.
So. To sum up my position on the matter: I think the add-cycles on most boss fights currently in the game should be kept the same or increased. The HP of the adds within those cycles should be decreased. And further boss encounters added to the game should have more variety of combat. Such as unreachable enemy phases, moving red circles and lines, and things of that nature.
How about a GWF boss who uses Avalanche of Steel to dive-bomb the tank and anyone near him? During that attack you cannot fight the boss while it is in the air, whatsoever, and must flee the shrinking circle of doom before impact.
Or a boss with a lower overall health pool that retreats from combat to recover 1/6th of their health bar the first time they reach 75%, 50%, and 25% leaving the party to deal with their minions and lieutenants for a short while.
Or a boss which has only slow constant DPS applied to the entire party with EXTREME burst DPS phases that can wipe an unwary Defender. Something like Tonberry from Final Fantasy.
Or a New Boss which routinely destroys sections of the battlefield making it a smaller and smaller field of play to dodge and avoid red circles within (That one sounds like a nailbiter!)
Adding new bosses with new mechanics rather than changing the mechanics already extant.
Thoughts on that summation?
-Rachel-
Looks interesting but how do you add some randomness to encounters?
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tykytysMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
The kind of encounters you mentionned are too scripted to be fun after your 10th run or so. When i say that adds makes encounters less predictable it means that not every boss fight will look the same, because you can predict the behaviour of one, maybe two big npcs, but not what a swarm of adds will do. Unless you're a machine. That's not a big variation but still it's a variation and that's enough for me. Scripted boss are just a pain in the ***, it's a chore and not fun. When you know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going to stand in the next 10s then i consider this boss encounter is a fail.
I couldn't imagine running many fights more than ten times. I'd gouge my eyes out from boredom. I don't think I'd mind a wider variety of boss tactics in this game.
If folks are running dungeons that many times, either (1) they really love grinding, in which case they don't care about tactics, since the sole goal is to collect loot or (2) the developers aren't providing enough content for the players.
Of course, if you really think that boss fights are varied enough just by having adds literally fall from the ceiling or rise from the ground, then more power to you!
Here's another (better) way to think about Damage as Damage mitigation:
If you aren't hitting the mob back, do you have any chance of killing it before it kills you? No, it's potential damage at that point is infinite. Any damage you do reduces the timeline of incoming damage, therefore limiting it's potential damage output. The faster you deal damage to it, the lower it's timeline gets, vastly lowering the potential incoming damage.
How is this Not damage mitigation?
Because it is the -baseline- assumption for combat to even exist. Otherwise their is no combat duration. There is no combat. There is only a wall of HP and a person hitting it.
The Baseline is modified by other variables. But -every- character needs to be able to do baseline damage to survive the game. Ergo you cannot consider Baseline Damage a form of damage mitigation since it is the BASIS of combat.
BURST damage, or SPIKE damage, on the other hand, is a form of mitigation in the combat duration equation.
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
Comments
The kind of encounters you mentionned are too scripted to be fun after your 10th run or so. When i say that adds makes encounters less predictable it means that not every boss fight will look the same, because you can predict the behaviour of one, maybe two big npcs, but not what a swarm of adds will do. Unless you're a machine. That's not a big variation but still it's a variation and that's enough for me. Scripted boss are just a pain in the ***, it's a chore and not fun. When you know exactly what you're going to do and where you're going to stand in the next 10s then i consider this boss encounter is a fail.
No. One is not constructive. If I ask "What would you do differently" you don't say "Well I wouldn't do the same thing!" That's not constructive. It's redundant and dismissive meant to cast aspersions on what we're talking over the changes of. The rest of your post is what we're discussing changing. Going over it, again, isn't constructive. We've outlined the problem: How do we solve it?
I wasn't speaking on the boss fights. I was speaking on the idea of putting puzzles and riddles and the like in dungeons. Unless they're randomized they'll simply be looked up. Unless they're relatively easy the frustration factor can be incredibly high for a Dungeon Queue group.
-Rachel-
Go back to my post and re-read it. My primary suggestion to mitigate add-frustration was to lower the HP of the Adds so that CWs and GWFs can dispatch them, fairly quickly, to allow the striker, defender, and leader to primarily focus on the boss.
-Rachel-
Uh adds make every fight the same. I can tell you with perfect consistency what it going to happen in every dungeon fight I run: I, the cleric, am going to carry the group through the whole fight by kiting the untankable adds while healing everyone. Because that is the best strategy in every fight in this game.
Fair enough, I concede that controlling bosses is difficult to balance. I guess one final point about CW's role is this... As a rogue, I change up to 2 encounter powers, and 1 daily throughout a dungeon. I try to optimize what I can to be the most useful. Sometimes, its more aoe. Sometimes, its more burst. Other times, it is a debuff (thats right, I actually use a debuff on a rogue!). I've appreciated in groups when we decided on a burst the boss strat, and CW's changed their abilities to optimize.
Pandergos, you just summed up my last few random que groups on pirate king perfectly.
You're close. All combat is a function of Damage Mitigation. Damage-per-Second is a form of damage mitigation. i.e if we can kill the boss 30% faster, we have mitigated 100% of the damage it will have done in that time.
Think of it like this, the goal of an encounter is to not die before you defeat the enemy. To that end, resisting more damage, avoiding more damage through avoidance stats and activated dodges (moving out of the way of large attacks), and kill it faster are all valid forms of mitigating the total amount of damage potential in a fight.
However, dungeon encounters have the opportunity to be more than just math, they have the opportunity to factor in Skill of Execution. How well the players can execute a task in order to further their goal (of not dying long enough to kill the boss). Whether that task is avoiding a huge build up to a one-shot AoE by diving into cover, or having enough DPS to kill the boss before a rage timer (or getting pushed off a cliff as the boss slowly advances), or successfully keeping agro/quickly killing lots of adds.
Skill of execution can come in a variety of forms, and that's what the suggestions in this thread are about. Waves of adds are just one form of that.
A bit of nostalgia for the old timers.
PVP guide - Keeping it fun with the basics.
DONT buy this logic...please! Not everyone NEEDS to be 10000% effective on EVERY fight. That is my point. Some fights can emphasize some roles over others, and just by doing that, you'll get more variation. And here is the kicker....you'll still need every role to progress through the dungeon. I love good add fights. I love watching CW's do their thing, but you don't need to accept the logic that if you dont have 20 adds to control, you're worthless.
Maybe they are not fun for YOU, but you do not speak for me. Me (and my group of friends) have a blast doing them.
I expounded, lightly, on both in my post.
-Rachel-
constructive answers can be as simple as "don't copy/paste the same adds for 33 bosses". This could lead to the discussion we're having here. I just hate knowing that all 33 bosses will have adds. We've had some great ideas for boss fights that don't need mechanics to dish out adds. As for each roll, yeah it's taken care of with trash prior to the boss. Also classes could swap out encounters to take down specific bosses. Take the CW, if a boss doesnt have adds then the CW could just swap out some of the CC encounters with more damage ones. Now that role is taken care of. If there are little to no adds the GWF could do the same.
I'd be happy with some of the 33 bosses with much higher HP pool that required moving out of red more often than another boss with add triggers.
Ability Scores || All Attribute Roll Combinations || My Cleric Stream \o/
How about a GWF boss who uses Avalanche of Steel to dive-bomb the tank and anyone near him? During that attack you cannot fight the boss while it is in the air, whatsoever, and must flee the shrinking circle of doom before impact.
Or a boss with a lower overall health pool that retreats from combat to recover 1/6th of their health bar the first time they reach 75%, 50%, and 25% leaving the party to deal with their minions and lieutenants for a short while.
Or a boss which has only slow constant DPS applied to the entire party with EXTREME burst DPS phases that can wipe an unwary Defender. Something like Tonberry from Final Fantasy.
Or a New Boss which routinely destroys sections of the battlefield making it a smaller and smaller field of play to dodge and avoid red circles within (That one sounds like a nailbiter!)
Adding new bosses with new mechanics rather than changing the mechanics already extant.
Thoughts on that summation?
-Rachel-
Damage is Damage mitigation. Think of it like this:
Your average group takes 100 seconds to defeat a boss. During that time, the boss puts out 10,000 damage (highly simplified math for ease). The tanks armor mitigates 25% of that, for a total of 7500 damage. The healer heals 50% of it, for a total incoming damage of 2500.
If a non-average group, with a better than average healer, or tank mitigates more of that, the total incoming damage is less.
Same so if a group with a better than average DPS kills the mob before it has a chance to deal it's 10,000 damage. That potential damage has been successfully "mitigated".
Get the Dev's to play the Vanguard raid Dungeons and see how different each Boss is.
Ability Scores || All Attribute Roll Combinations || My Cleric Stream \o/
I understand what you're saying. I truly do. But your conflating the baseline combat duration with the modifiers to it.
Baseline combat duration is the Hit Points of the target divided by the amount of -standard- damage a player can throw out at all times and the Reverse, with the lower duration being the combat's actual duration. In a straight comparison that combat duration should significantly favor the Boss while when it comes to minions or open world enemies the reverse is true.
Burst DPS and Damage Mitigation is the variable that -adjusts- that baseline on one side or the other.
I'm not discussing combat in an absolutist sense. I'm discussing it from a game development sense.
-Rachel-
You totally missed my summation, huh?
-Rachel-
I love those suggestions. Lots of good ideas in this thread. That floor collapsing one is awesome. Reminds me of a fight in EQ2 that was on a giant grid with sections of the floor that would fall away.
Here's another (better) way to think about Damage as Damage mitigation:
If you aren't hitting the mob back, do you have any chance of killing it before it kills you? No, it's potential damage at that point is infinite. Any damage you do reduces the timeline of incoming damage, therefore limiting it's potential damage output. The faster you deal damage to it, the lower it's timeline gets, vastly lowering the potential incoming damage.
How is this Not damage mitigation?
Tera did it right with their bosses. Honestly, how HARD can it be to come up with something a bit different than the first 5 dungeons?
No encounter is fun after the xth time; farming usually isn't.
However, when you have many different types of encounters and you rotate around them, you get variation. The encounters within Neverwinter are all EXACTLY the same, with different models and different rooms. You are partially right that you might not know exactly what a group of adds will do, but you know what what they will do comes from a very limited subset of options (they attack the tank who gets aggro on them, or they attack the healer).
Furthermore, this type of randomness actually doesn't add to the feeling of randomness like you imply it does. When you have a boss that can choose between 5 or 6 abilities, but you can grasp the difference between the abilities so that every option is discrete and concrete within your head, which one it uses feels random. But, when you have 5-6 mobs on the screen and they are all acting independantly, the same is not true. In that case, it is both utterly chaotic and at the same time entirely unimportant what each discrete mob action is; it doesn't change your response.
If you roll 3 die, you can discern and track each dice, and in doing so, you think about each result, and given a list of reponses based on the rolls, you could react differently. However, if you took a handful of 20 die and rolled, each dice loses its focus, it becomes just one in a pile that bears no individual significance. This is what spamming adds does to a boss fight; the bosses totally lose their identities in the swarms of adds.
To TL:DR it, too much randomness added through adds to a fight both:
1. De-emphasizes each individual element of the fight (whether that element is a mob, or a mechanic, or whatever), and,
2. Necessitates each element to be less discerete and more generic since the players can't react to each as a discrete entity.
This is not WoW.
Looks interesting but how do you add some randomness to encounters?
I couldn't imagine running many fights more than ten times. I'd gouge my eyes out from boredom. I don't think I'd mind a wider variety of boss tactics in this game.
If folks are running dungeons that many times, either (1) they really love grinding, in which case they don't care about tactics, since the sole goal is to collect loot or (2) the developers aren't providing enough content for the players.
Of course, if you really think that boss fights are varied enough just by having adds literally fall from the ceiling or rise from the ground, then more power to you!
Because it is the -baseline- assumption for combat to even exist. Otherwise their is no combat duration. There is no combat. There is only a wall of HP and a person hitting it.
The Baseline is modified by other variables. But -every- character needs to be able to do baseline damage to survive the game. Ergo you cannot consider Baseline Damage a form of damage mitigation since it is the BASIS of combat.
BURST damage, or SPIKE damage, on the other hand, is a form of mitigation in the combat duration equation.
-Rachel-