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Artificial difficulty makes some boss fight not fun
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
Just to make it clear, i'm all for challenges and enjoy when i have to learn to be a better player in the games i play. But there are some artificial difficulties in several boss fights that make it not funny at all to play. Here are some chosen examples. I will only talk about epic dungeons here, since it's all we have to do at endgame.
- No time to take a look at the surroundings: The boss engages you as soon as you enter the boss room. Caverns of Karrundax is the example i have in mind. As soon as the team enters the room, the boss engages it with an almost one shot attack.
This is an artificial difficulty element because we can't plan anything, although the boss fight is extremely tough. Pug teams will be unable to coordinate. Which side should we go when we enter? What about people unaware of it? Once you know it it's just a wasted attack, and when you don't, it's like the designer who made this boss thought it would be fun and engaging to start your boss fight with a free team wipe for no reason.
- Almost one-shot attacks/one shot attack with a very short warning: The boss has an attack leaving you at 5-10% HP or one-shooting you. There are many examples, but my "favourite" one is the Grey wolf den boss. It has hands poping from the ground where players stand, with a 1s warning on the ground. Admittedly, most bosses have such attacks.
This is an artificial difficulty because 1s is the time we have to stay in animation lock when we use a spell. I'm ok with bosses hitting hard but since i've seen no further warning and noticed no pattern in many one-shot attacks (one every 30s would be enough to know we have to keep moving and not using spells) , or very short cooldowns on these boss spells.
- The "gang ra*e" stunlock/knockback: this is one of the most annoying "feature" we can experience in boss fights. The best example is the Lair of the mad dragon boss. There are just too many huge bag of HPs npcs with knockback and stun abilities on sort cooldowns and no immunity to stuns/knocbacks when you just got stun, which isn't fun IMO.
This is an artificial difficulty because the design of several encounters makes the ground full of red stuff. This should never happen. Sometimes, the team also have to use OP abilities, especially in Mad Dragon/T2 dungeons like stacking two divine astral shields just not to get wiped by the unending waves of tough NPCs (especially clerics, like myself), so we have to stay inside the OP healing zone not to get wiped by 30 NPCs, but end up getting stunlocked and unable to do anything.
- No place to hide: This is the case of several T2 encounters like Caverns of Karrundax and Dread Vault, but it also happens in Mad Dragon. The map is an arena where the boss farms players...
This is for me an artificial difficulty element but admittedly it's debatable, but since most NPCs have an AOE attack, we should have a place to hide when the close combat small adds are hitting really hard and run fast, like the little brains in Dread vault. Having to face massive AOEs and fast running hard hitting melee NPCs at the same time with no place to hide and deal with one issue at a time looks like a death penalty in most cases, because even if we dodge AOE stuff, the swarms of small adds will kill anyone having aggro in 1-2 seconds. I know the wizard could do something but if there is no safe spot he won't be able to use any spell.
Now you will understand why the Throne of Idriss boss fight is my favourite one: a challenging fight, a boss with powerful but no one-shot abilities, in a large map with lots of props to hide. The tank can challenge the 3-4 toughest and hard hitting NPCs away from the team while the wizard and gwf deal with smaller adds, the cleric can run around, kiting AOE circles and healing people when adds are under control, and dps can kill stuff. It's definitely not repetitive, not all encounters look the same, because the area is large, the fight can be played anywhere on the map, people will behave differently and make it feel different, and when someone fails at doing his job properly there's a deserved team wipe. It's definitely not the hardest encounter ever but still it remains challenging. And there is no artificial difficulty element.
I know there are many little cheats to beat T2 dungeon bosses and the devs shouldn't trust the data, because most T2 currently look like:
- there is a cheat (I'd say unforeseen design element instead, since it's mostly a boss suicide or terrain design failures), someone/the team uses it and the team wins.
- two clerics pop 2 divine astral shields at will. Success isn't guaranteed though but it will fairly increase the success rate. This isn't fun to play for clerics though since we are just heal bots struggling not to get knockbacked out of our circles and handling like 20 npcs at the same time, and that's all we can do.
Don't get me wrong, the combat mechanics are awesomen and engaging in this game, but there are really unfun elements coming from artificial difficulty, and it makes several boss fights extremely frustrating, even if we win.
- No time to take a look at the surroundings: The boss engages you as soon as you enter the boss room. Caverns of Karrundax is the example i have in mind. As soon as the team enters the room, the boss engages it with an almost one shot attack.
This is an artificial difficulty element because we can't plan anything, although the boss fight is extremely tough. Pug teams will be unable to coordinate. Which side should we go when we enter? What about people unaware of it? Once you know it it's just a wasted attack, and when you don't, it's like the designer who made this boss thought it would be fun and engaging to start your boss fight with a free team wipe for no reason.
- Almost one-shot attacks/one shot attack with a very short warning: The boss has an attack leaving you at 5-10% HP or one-shooting you. There are many examples, but my "favourite" one is the Grey wolf den boss. It has hands poping from the ground where players stand, with a 1s warning on the ground. Admittedly, most bosses have such attacks.
This is an artificial difficulty because 1s is the time we have to stay in animation lock when we use a spell. I'm ok with bosses hitting hard but since i've seen no further warning and noticed no pattern in many one-shot attacks (one every 30s would be enough to know we have to keep moving and not using spells) , or very short cooldowns on these boss spells.
- The "gang ra*e" stunlock/knockback: this is one of the most annoying "feature" we can experience in boss fights. The best example is the Lair of the mad dragon boss. There are just too many huge bag of HPs npcs with knockback and stun abilities on sort cooldowns and no immunity to stuns/knocbacks when you just got stun, which isn't fun IMO.
This is an artificial difficulty because the design of several encounters makes the ground full of red stuff. This should never happen. Sometimes, the team also have to use OP abilities, especially in Mad Dragon/T2 dungeons like stacking two divine astral shields just not to get wiped by the unending waves of tough NPCs (especially clerics, like myself), so we have to stay inside the OP healing zone not to get wiped by 30 NPCs, but end up getting stunlocked and unable to do anything.
- No place to hide: This is the case of several T2 encounters like Caverns of Karrundax and Dread Vault, but it also happens in Mad Dragon. The map is an arena where the boss farms players...
This is for me an artificial difficulty element but admittedly it's debatable, but since most NPCs have an AOE attack, we should have a place to hide when the close combat small adds are hitting really hard and run fast, like the little brains in Dread vault. Having to face massive AOEs and fast running hard hitting melee NPCs at the same time with no place to hide and deal with one issue at a time looks like a death penalty in most cases, because even if we dodge AOE stuff, the swarms of small adds will kill anyone having aggro in 1-2 seconds. I know the wizard could do something but if there is no safe spot he won't be able to use any spell.
Now you will understand why the Throne of Idriss boss fight is my favourite one: a challenging fight, a boss with powerful but no one-shot abilities, in a large map with lots of props to hide. The tank can challenge the 3-4 toughest and hard hitting NPCs away from the team while the wizard and gwf deal with smaller adds, the cleric can run around, kiting AOE circles and healing people when adds are under control, and dps can kill stuff. It's definitely not repetitive, not all encounters look the same, because the area is large, the fight can be played anywhere on the map, people will behave differently and make it feel different, and when someone fails at doing his job properly there's a deserved team wipe. It's definitely not the hardest encounter ever but still it remains challenging. And there is no artificial difficulty element.
I know there are many little cheats to beat T2 dungeon bosses and the devs shouldn't trust the data, because most T2 currently look like:
- there is a cheat (I'd say unforeseen design element instead, since it's mostly a boss suicide or terrain design failures), someone/the team uses it and the team wins.
- two clerics pop 2 divine astral shields at will. Success isn't guaranteed though but it will fairly increase the success rate. This isn't fun to play for clerics though since we are just heal bots struggling not to get knockbacked out of our circles and handling like 20 npcs at the same time, and that's all we can do.
Don't get me wrong, the combat mechanics are awesomen and engaging in this game, but there are really unfun elements coming from artificial difficulty, and it makes several boss fights extremely frustrating, even if we win.
Post edited by diogene0 on
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Uriziel GF Gear Rating 14800
David Grave CW 10500 Gear Rating 6000 recovery(kripparian build)
Uriziem Monk Completionist 28 past life , DDO player since March 2006 (2006-2009 on Devourer server, 2009-2012 on Cannith server)
ex officer and founder of Ordo Draconis, DDO Italian Elite Guild, now on NEVERWINTER
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"Thanks for the feedback! We appreciate you speaking up! We are looking into it now! You have been very helpful!"
I think they are going to have look at the aggro generated by guardian fighters as well.
Walking around needs to be able to instantly cancel anything you're currently doing.
Same for dodge, although dodge already does, some skills still lock you for a fraction of a second before you can dodge and screw you over.
I just wish we had more actual boss fights, not Placeholder Boss #1414172 + spawn 10 elite mobs every 30 seconds.
Nearly every boss fight just feels like someone overpulled trash, that's it. Not an actual boss fight.
As for the rest... well I found it rather entertaining that you consider Idris a challenging fight.
I'm finding the game incredibly difficult and I'm only in my 20's! So there's no way I'm going to make it to end game, and to be quite honest, I don't really want to. This is not fun!
It seems this game was designed for the 'hardcore' gamer, which is fine, but I'm not one of them. I just want to login for a couple of hours, mess about and have some fun.
Sad to say it, but this game isn't fun for the 'casual' gamer. So I think it's time for me to move on.
Best of luck to all of you.
it's realy sucks when you get one shot because you where stuck in a combat animation.
Totally agree.
A boss fight it's ok to have some adds, but the REAL difficult part should be in the actions of the boss, the different attacks at random times, the reactions to players actions. Actually the difficulty it's only in cleric kiting the millions of adds and DPSes trying to reach them and kill them. Not difficult, just boring. Just like Benny Hill show.
Give some REAL DIFFICULT boss, with few adds, with phases during which the boss is changing its behaviour, random abilities to challenge players reactions, environmental damage, and so on.
Look at some "The Secret World" MMORPG boss fights in instances, that was really nice and challenging.
^ this and, i know people hate mentioning it, but, WoW, if anything, has well-designed dungeons/raids.
I don't mind things being challenging, but there's a big difference between challenging and fun gameplay and annoying, frustrating beating-your-head-against-the-wall gameplay.
Almost all dungeons I've ran so far have been super easy up until you reach the last boss where it just proceeds to tear you a new one, over and over and over again.
Mad Dragon isn't t2...and you don't need 2 clerics to complete this instance, Throne of Idris on the other hand is challenging at first but once you've completed it or began to gear in T2 this instance as well as every other T1 instance becomes a joke.
If you want to look around in a boss room do it like you do in any other game, walk in, and look around. I keep seeing you say artificial difficulty, but wtf is that? It's not artificially difficult it just is difficult. What I think your problem is you don't like the reasons the encounters are difficult, that doesn't make the difficulty fake or artificial.
I do enjoy encounters with more mechanics, different things to do outside of killing adds and not standing in red stuff. That being said lots of adds are challenging and that is why people cry about it so much. Take WoW for example being a very popular mmo. Most of its boss fights have phases, different attacks, and all kinds of random <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> the devs of WoW come up with and sometimes even some adds. This is cool at first, you need to "learn" the encounter, but what happens once you do learn it? The challenge is suddenly gone and you can farm it all day. In this game on the other hand, sure there's not much to it right? There are red circles and adds, but no matter how many times you do that boss he's still going to keep you on your toes to avoid the big attacks and give you a hard time dealing with <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> tons of adds.
In the end I think this makes for difficult content which I prefer over learning something once then repeating it endlessness for gear. Do I think the devs of this game can expand on their boss mechanics? Yes I do but I don't think the right approach is remove or cut down on adds then make the boss do a little song and dance.
Something for the road, take the Mad Dragon encounter and remove the adds. Now, without the adds obviously this fight is so easy it may be soloable. What can you do without putting adds back in the encounter to make him difficult with the current game mechanics?
You can say that about every boss fight in Neverwinter, that's why simply adding adds to the fight is what you would call artificial difficulty. It's a gimmick, and incredibly uncreative way of increasing the difficulty of the fight with a minimal amount of work. It is not challenging, simply tedious.
In most boss encounters three to four adds at a time would be more than enough given how quickly they spam their abilities.
I didn't talk about adds but I mentioned several spells npcs use, and some encounters design.
When i talk about artificial difficulty, I'm talking about design elements making an encounter frustrating (because you can't do anything via stunlocks for instance) instead of challenging. They should keep a lot of adds because we have GWFs and CWs to keep busy, and clerics to challenge. This isn't the main issue, but they should take a look at how adds spells can stack.
i understand that, but, in some boss fights (mad dragon, last boss in pirate kings lair, etc.), adds are a huge problem and just make it annoying/frustrating.
so far, the best designed boss fight i've seen have been in the frozen lair. the first boss has some adds, granted, but its not overwhelming. they're easy to deal with. he also gains new mechanics each time you need to free him from his prison, etc.
the enhanced rime golem is actually a fun fight because, again, he doesn't summon adds and he's constantly doing attacks, moving around, hitting people, ignoring aggro and applying real pressure. he only summoned four adds total.
the last boss was actually disappointing after fighting the other two. the boss, himself, has plenty of attacks, but summoning several golems/archers just makes your cleric kite them while everyone kills the boss.
On topic yes, this game has all sorts of artificial difficulty. The infinitely spawning adds are a good example of that, though, along with a lot of what you brought up.