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Boss Mechanics (or lack thereof) and Other Criticisms
void2487
Member Posts: 15 Arc User
Are there any plans to implement real boss mechanics, or is every encounter in this game going to consist of 350 adds + adding HP to boss + making differently shaped ground AOE?
Sorry if this seems like whining, but I've never seen such lazy encounter development. Every single boss fight is exactly the same. The formula is so simplistic, it's almost embarrassing. Throw more/different types of adds in the mix. Give the boss more HP. Give the boss one or two abilities that consist of nothing but ground AOE to avoid. Where are the actual mechanics? When is there going to be a legitimate encounter that isn't a simple exercise in add management?
I really want to like this game, but I've been seriously disappointed with this and some other basic flaws that should never have been allowed in the release. A simple list of a few gripes includes:
These queue system issues are fundamental issues that have cropped up in various other MMOs and have been addressed. Why would they make the same mistake? Are you not supposed to learn from prior mistakes? I realize this is a "beta" (also debatable), but some of these are fundamental design flaws, not just kinks that need to be worked out.
Sorry if this seems like whining, but I've never seen such lazy encounter development. Every single boss fight is exactly the same. The formula is so simplistic, it's almost embarrassing. Throw more/different types of adds in the mix. Give the boss more HP. Give the boss one or two abilities that consist of nothing but ground AOE to avoid. Where are the actual mechanics? When is there going to be a legitimate encounter that isn't a simple exercise in add management?
I really want to like this game, but I've been seriously disappointed with this and some other basic flaws that should never have been allowed in the release. A simple list of a few gripes includes:
- Boss mechanics noted above.
- Queue system does not allow replacement of party members after a boss is killed. So, if someone DC's or ducks out at the last boss, after your group has spent sometimes an hour or more in a dungeon, your whole group is screwed.
- PVP queue system allows premades to queue against full pugs. Really?
- No penalty for abandoning a dungeon / arena after joining via queue.
- Gear score system is clearly awful. PVP gear grants higher GS than half of T1/T2 items. Also T1 grants higher GS than T2 in some cases.
- Respec. Volumes can be written about this, but my main gripe with this is that this game includes PVP and PVE. Two systems that require completely different gameplay styles. You cannot allow only 1 permanent spec and then charge people to respec, when there are two distinct gameplay styles. Either allow 2 permanent specs, or stop charging people a stupid amount to respec.
- There is no end-game. This needs no elaboration. There simply isn't.
- There are no diminishing returns on CC in PvP.
- You cannot trade AD for items directly. This makes NO SENSE as AD is the game's main currency. The only rationale behind this is that Cryptic wants to force people to use the AH where the 10% cut acts as an AD sink.
These queue system issues are fundamental issues that have cropped up in various other MMOs and have been addressed. Why would they make the same mistake? Are you not supposed to learn from prior mistakes? I realize this is a "beta" (also debatable), but some of these are fundamental design flaws, not just kinks that need to be worked out.
Post edited by void2487 on
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In the end you cant just pull this kind of HAMSTER and players wont noticed but hey nice try and now get rollling with mechanic before we all leaves for others game.
Couple boss fights like that is fine but not 95% of them no.
If there are way too many adds for you to handle, then you are handling them incorrectly...this should tell you something very specific.
If you can't kill them, you aren't meant to. Deal with them in a different way, or kill the boss fast enough before they grow out of control (depends on the encounter, of course).
Agree with the other two.
This is not a valid rebuttal to my argument that the boss mechanics are laughable. Just because you aren't required to kill every add, doesn't mean using them as an artificial way to increase boss encounter difficulty is valid. How about making the actual boss mechanics the difficult part of a fight?
Controlling 97 adds and then having your whole group suicide to clear the adds is not a valid game mechanic. It is a way around a terribly developed encounter.
I'm talking about between players. Your argument makes no sense. How is it a protection against farmbots to disallow players to use the game's main currency in trades? Every other mmo in existence allows this. And, if you've been in Enclave recently, you'll see that the farmbots are just as rampant here, even with this stupid trade system.
How is this any different than trading via the auction house, aside from the fact that there is no AD sink with the AH cut?
Farmers are always going to farm. And they will always find ways around these systems. As I mentioned above, just join zone chat in Enclave and you will be met with countless farmers spamming their AD for real money.
I really wonder if this is a limitation of the engine. I can't remember any boss in the 3 games that really has a "mechanic" to it, i heard there is on in CO, but i haven't seen him myself. It's like all an NPC can do is do random special that are on a CD (or not for some mobs).
Dungeons as a whole are ridiculous and boring in this game. Every dungeon is 95% trash.... WHY is there so much trash? For example just today I went through Spellplague with my rouge, had 3 CWs and a DC, so we were pumping out heavy dps. There are 3 boss fights in this dungeon, and I'd say we spent 20 minutes total fighting all three bosses. Yet it took us about an hour and a half to finish the dungeon. 95% of this dungeon is trash... WHY? It's not fun. It's not exciting. It's not difficult. It's BORING. And it's the SAME MOBS over and over and over and over. You fight 30 mobs scattered about one room, move into the next room, and fight 30 more mobs of the SAME MONSTERS FROM THE LAST ROOM.
Don't even know if I'll bother continuing to 60. What's the point? Played one dungeon, you've literally played them all.
I agree with the OP; the boss encounters are strikingly repetitive. They almost all turn into attrition fights where the tank is the only party member consistently hitting the boss and everyone else deals with the adds. I say "almost all," but really it is every fight and the only varying factor is degree; some encounters have more adds requiring constant attention, some encounters have fewer adds and allow the DPS classes to actually put time on the boss.
Repetitive encounters aside, I think the encounters could be tuned a little better. When the final boss takes 20-30 minutes of an estimated "45 minute" dungeon run, something isn't right.
SPAWN ADDS!
This is extremely repetitive and lazy.
What suggestions do you have for dungeon design in general?
I would like to see bosses with targetable weakpoints, that need to be dealt with at certain points in the fight. Such as the final boss in CoK(lvl 59 dun) its a big red dragon. It flys up onto a perch at certain points in the fight. With the opportunity to take out its wings, that should give the damage dealers in your team more opportunities to deal damage because it cant fly off to safety anymore. Perhaps 10k tail targeted damage would be required for the dragon to stand on its hindlegs and reveal its belly, a weakpoint that allows additional damage to be dealt or perhaps a unique HP pool that must be drained in order to defeat the boss.
This is a perfect option. This game, with it's red AOE markers and style of combat is perfect for weak points. ala Panzer Dragoon Saga. The boss is preparing a cone AOE to his frony and sweeping left, the red Marker appears, green cone appears beehind and to his right, showing you where to attack from to hit a weak spot. It would be a vast improvement.
Saying that, I find the combat in general to be pretty poor. It's supposed to be an action RPG but cryptic have entirely failed to get the action mechanics down. One thing in this game I can't help but notice is the total reliance on pots when soloing, because trash mobs do unavoidable, homing, white damage. They even seem to be able to reach upto 10 meters with a sword. So your health is constantly being drained, you're unable to move out of the way of most attacks, saving your dodges for powerful ones. Even then the lag seems to screw this up. Most PC attacks leave you entirely vulnerable to this white damage, because the animations are just so long. In the other bikg Action MMOs and multiplayers such as monster hunter, Tera, GW2, RaiderZ, you can avoid damage completely if you're fast enough. This simply isn't true in Neverwinter and it's a poorer game for it. Combine that with the endless pots and the other problems laid out by the OP and you've got a pretty damned poor-do of a game, that really should be a lot better.
Oh and final complaint. Companions? Really, cryptic? Why? Just why? Why would you add such an annoying mechanic to a game style that really doesn't need it? Oh yeah, profit..... I think that pretty much sums up Neverwinters problems. It's the game where PWE are trying out how far they can go in being profiteering jerks. It's that one unnecessary step further, that you just have to push.
The whole idea is nice, but the implementation is really bad. If you have around 100+ latency, you have nearly no reaction time left to avoid the bigger hits, even some red zones are nearly not avoidable. And then you have the funny 2 mob groups that do nothing but spawn there "small" special, as early as the 2 enforcers. How am i supposed to avoid them while actually killing them, because i can't attack while moving, unlike GW2 where this would actually work, so i just eat the damage and spam pots, so not fun. For me a pot should be an emergency, not something you could bind to your move keys. I have totally given up on skirmishes and dungeons, they are just all the same and not fun at all, even the solo play is horribly annoying, so i only duo now, but since i hit 60 i don't really see any reason to continue playing, we might do the last zone at some point, but anything else is doubtful. There are so many abilities and ways you could design your character, but probably 90% of the builds are doomed to fail in solo PvE badly, because it was designed and tuned in a really bad way.