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Action MMO = no boss mechanics?
rescorla
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 24 Arc User
I've read numerous posts where players complain about the lack of any boss AI mechanics throughout every stage of the game. MMOs have had boss mechanics, whether they be simple or complex, for 10+years. The fact that this game does not have any kind of boss mechanics except for waves of adds is my one and only concern about the game.
I can come up with some plausible reasons for why Cryptic made the design decision to not implement scripted boss mechanics. The best reason I can come up with is that gameplay in this MMO is supposed to be fast paced, frenetic with players constantly moving around. If bosses had complex, scripted mechanics, the difficulty of the game would be too high for the average player.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, scripted boss mechanics may not be part of the design because Cryptic ran out of time and had to release the game. Regardless of the reason why Cryptic chose not to implement scripted boss mechanics, how many people think at some point they have to be added into the game in order to ensure players stick around?
On a related note, can players who create Foundry content generate scripted boss encounters?
I can come up with some plausible reasons for why Cryptic made the design decision to not implement scripted boss mechanics. The best reason I can come up with is that gameplay in this MMO is supposed to be fast paced, frenetic with players constantly moving around. If bosses had complex, scripted mechanics, the difficulty of the game would be too high for the average player.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, scripted boss mechanics may not be part of the design because Cryptic ran out of time and had to release the game. Regardless of the reason why Cryptic chose not to implement scripted boss mechanics, how many people think at some point they have to be added into the game in order to ensure players stick around?
On a related note, can players who create Foundry content generate scripted boss encounters?
Post edited by rescorla on
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yes alot of the fight's is add's but give it time.
This is my primary concern as well. I love the combat in NW. I also love good, difficult dungeon content for small groups (4 - 10). If NW has nothing to offer but an oversize monster with millions of HP and hundreds of adds, however, there is no chance I'll stick around. There are too many competitors that have interesting dungeon content.
I hope this was a matter of short deadlines, not engine limitations.
At the moment, every large fight I've come across is the same and to be honest, the mechanics are tedious. It's not to say they're not challenging but it would be nice if a bit more thought went into boss fights.
Essentially... one elite mob, periodically summons a bunch of lesser mobs. That's it. There are some variations in what the main bosses do but not a whole heap. It would just be nice to see some variation in future. Oh and some balancing... I've just reached the point where a wellgeared and balanced group is starting to struggle with Dungeons. People who brought a significant number of potions... Just because the number of adds spawned + the boss mechanics are making it very hard to beat the end bosses. I hope to take my own guildies in soon but more than a few of them are having dungeon runs fail at the final hurdle.
Something needs tweaking a bit.
Given the emphasis in this game of the players fighting many more enemies it is understandable to have boss encounters which are heavily focused on CC and add killing, but not to have EVERY encounter and indeed every phase of every encounter consist of nothing but killing adds.
LOL, well stated cichard! :rolleyes::D
Like coven said it's pointless to just complain, so here are some ideas.
- Stop the nonstop adds spawning (needs to be said, again
- Perhaps have some bosses spawn adds at 90%,50%,20% of their health. Not all the time.
- Give bosses some good aoe skills or some skills that will keep everyone alert (something like shooting a fire snake moving around on it's own for 10-20 secs). Those will even ranged classes in the action. Just be carefull with them, if the boss spams a huge aoe all the time it's not fun, it's just annoying.
- Some bosses could transform to something a lot stronger or split in 2 at something like 40% life instead of spawning addds.
- Have a healer and a damage boss together. Be careful about selfheals, there is no point if the healer boss is immortal.
- Use a ranger boss in a place with a lot of traps. Be careful with that, we don't want the boss to die on the traps but to use them as weapons.
- Boss with a few illusions instead of adds.
Some more things, I don't know if they are possible but they could also be fun :
- Have a mirror of the players as boss. If you can create a dublication of the characters in the dungeon with the same stats, skills, feats etc. That also needs a good AI.
- Have a not overpowered boss take control of a random player in party for a while every now and then.
- Instead of killing the boss, make the players protect someone from adds. Don't make that someone too easy or too hard to kill.
I just gave you a list of 10 things in 30 minutes, there are so much more you can come up with, with a whole team and a few hours meeting. All of them of course need to be done correctly and tested out properly.
Anyway, make the boss fights fun, unique and challenging, not frustrating and repetitive.
Diablo 3 made Inferno difficulty stupid hard. Just stupid, stupid hard. So the response was people exploited their way ahead to Act 3 and Act 4 and exploited farming chests and breaking pots for crazy gear just to be able to do Act 1 and 2. They also made crazy millions of coin selling said items to people who had no idea (sound familiar?). Well then more people started doing it and then they nerfed all the exploits, first the pots then the chests. Then you had a period of about a month there where no one could get any good gear and Act 1 and Act 2 was pretty frustrating all around for more and more people coming into Inferno. A lot of people I knew quit the game at this point. They later went in and fixed everything and again made it more accessable and fun to play.
I see Neverwinter currently in the same state. Most Epic dungeons are basically "MORE ADDS" design philosophy. Every fight is all about add control. As you get into T2's this just becomes more and more prevalent. More bosses have permanent adds that even if you take them down just pop right back up instantly so the only solution is to find a way to get rid of them. You can go the slow route and try to tank/kill them (which there's so many adds the Cleric will end up tanking them prompting people to bring two Clerics because of capped threat mechanics on a Guardian only being able to reliably hold threat on 5ish targets). Most people go the other route and find ways to try to chuck adds over ledges with a Wizard.
Cryptic probably will take the same route too. They will block all the cliffs to chuck mobs off of like they did with Epic Spider. They will fix Dual Astral Shield stacking making content trivial. Then everything will be super hard and no one will want to do it and with nothing to do they'll quit. Then they will see it was dumb to fix these things without also actually fixing the bad encounter mechanics that drove people to seek these exploits in the first place. Then they'll change the encounters to be not so stupid. Life will go on.
Shame we have to wait so long to get to that stage.
Sadly I agree
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
Really? Sorry, I must have forgot that boring means stupidly easy right? I mean if a boss is hard to kill it must be interesting yes? It couldn't be hard just because of the endless amounts of adds that it spawns that are so boring to fight against you question why on earth you're even doing the dungeon, but no it has to be hard because it's not boring, doesn't it? So if he said that he can't kill the boss but it's a really fun fight then means that his lying as he can't kill the boss obviously it's not fun?
Also, @demonsunder, I'm sorry but was the dungeons created during beta? I'm pretty sure they was designed way before anybody even got to play the game therefore they had plenty of time to add interesting boss fights. So because the game is new boss fights must be HAMSTER and then 5 years later they will be a lot better simply because it's not new even though they had more time to think and create interesting mechanics before the game was launch as they wasn't being rushed by the community unlike they will with future dungeons, yes this makes a lot of sense!
Anyway, on to the topic at hand, I feel the same about the boss fights they are not fun and almost every fight is played out the same way: start the boss dpsing the boss until adds spawn, now either kill them or just ignore them, move your *** out of the red circles and repeat. Seriously, do they honestly think anyone will enjoy that? It will kill the game, It will make the PvE players leave the game especially when exploits are removed to allow players to kill the bosses easier. Look at GW2 how many people moaned and left that game because boss fights there are the same here minus the adds. GW2 boss fights consist of bounce the boss between party, move out of the red circles and dps the boss as fast as possible. THIS IS NOT WHAT PEOPLE WANT IN AN MMO IN 2013! WoW is almost 10 years old now and yet they managed to create better boss mechanics then a 2013 mmo, seriously where is the logic in that?
However, it seems to be the same with every new MMO now, nobody is getting the PvE aspects right anymore with these terrible boss fight, heres to hoping that The Elder Scrolls Online can actually create a challenging yet FUN PvE end game.
- We have 'red areas' to dodge when possible. The red areas are not the same. Multiple red areas that overlap make it that much more challenging.
- We have tanks that can't lock down all the mobs. That means we need to stay on our feet.
- We have clerics that should at times stand and fight, and other times, run and kite.
- We have strategy and decisions to make about which adds to kill, and which to possibly ignore. Adds aren't created as equals.
What kind of mechanics would add to the experience? What kind of mechanics would not cost all flexibility that would require a certain group composition or strategy? What kind of mechanics would be clearly different to distinguish themselves from the 'more adds' concept?
- Puzzle type encounters. In order to do X, you must do R, S, and T in order. Botch the puzzle, and bad things happen, varying the consequence relative to the progress on the puzzle. This can quickly become trivial as the secret to the puzzle becomes known.
- Ying Yang encounters. Maintain near equal progress against two or more mobs. Get too far ahead or too far behind on one, and bad things happen.
- Agent encounters. One person must do something away from the rest of the group. If they stop, or are otherwise unsuccessful in the given task, the main group will struggle significantly, if not outright fail. The agent should be discretionary by the group. A group without a cleric for instance becomes much less of a group. However, if the circumstances were crafted with the loss of the cleric in mind, it can work to have the group without a cleric and the cleric acting as the agent.
- Simon Says. More or less an extension of the red area concept. When a mob says go there, you go there. If you don't, bad things happen. If you do, good things happen.
- Susceptibility/Immunity. While damage types are not distinct, we can pretend, and instead base it off archetype. Some mobs would be easier to damage by one archetype than another. I wouldn't want that as a normal, typical mechanic; but situationally, it may be ok. Perhaps in 'balancing' this scenario, the adds have one immunity susceptibility, while the main mobs have an opposite immunity/susceptibility.
- Tortoise mobs. A lot of encounters encourage the fastest damage possible, aka DPS checks. Reverse that incentive. The faster you damage a mob, the more terrible it becomes. Slow and steady wins the race.
- Bizzaro mobs. Damage heals the mob, healing damages it. Take special care with these mobs, as any more than two clerics to a group is asking a lot, and removes any sense of flexible composition.
The problem with many of these is once the trick is learned, the encounter becomes quite a bit more trivial. But nevertheless, these are some alternatives and possible enhancements to the standard format.
What are your ideas?
Boring does not mean easy, the fights are all the same and unless you bring the proper mix of characters, the boss fights can be boringly difficult. So what if some bosses are as mentally challenging as they are a skill test.
There are any number of spells in D&D that bosses can use to make the fights interesting for those bosses that are magic users, bosses in the fighter classes can have have weapons or armour that make the fight interesting. Have a boss that disappears for a number of seconds, just long enough for everyone to wonder where he went(not the milliseconds some do now), then reappear behind a PC or a distance away from the party and release an AOE spell. Giving Bosses a menu of options to choose from that is randomized per encounter can keep them from being repetitive.
You can make a boss fight that actually has the boss and it's lieutenant, in complimentary classes. Combined their HPs could be 1.25 times the standard boss. This is not to say that some bosses can't have adds, just not all of them.
The foundations need to be improved first. They need to be fixed before any larger (10 man or above) content is added, too.
As a habitual player of melee DPS / offtank characters, the one thing I get sick of in other games are the constant variations on "STOP what you're doing and go stand OVER THERE". Please let me keep playing my character, instead. I find that sooner or later, in other games, I "progress" to the point where the encounters require too perfect play, too quick reactions, or make too many demands on attention spans. At this point burnout quickly sets in. On the other hand, I played City of Heroes for eight years because that game was mercifully free from most of this junk for most of its lifespan.
If the players find that real time voice chat helps a whole lot, that in itself suggests that something is bad and broken.
You need instead to make the dungeons more like skirmishes. Cloak Tower is one of the best things in the game, fast happy fun from start to finish. There's your model for future team content.