Glorious Alpha Two Testers!

Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.

Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.

Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.

Overkill ~ Negative death.

My hopes for this game is to meet badass bosses. Bosses that do damage the likes of which we have never seen before. Bosses that may need 100 players to take down after a long time. With many deaths needing to be rezzed while such bosses are distracted by others.

During that fight, I would expect many people to die (well...temporarily of course). Which is the point of this post. How do you separate a badass boss from a real badass boss ? If you have have 500 health, one boss hits you for 1000 and one boss hits you for 10,000....it makes no difference as anything beyond 500 is simply wiped from the account by some slight of hand.

In the midst of battle we will need healers to bring people back to life. So should it not take longer to bring someone back to life that was hit by 10,000 damage than someone who was hit by 1000 damage ? Does this not accurately reflect the true nature of a greater threat. The requirement for more resources to counter the more powerful adversary.

Thoughts ?

Comments

  • In a game that is going to have exp/stat penalties for death, I just don't understand those that keep asking for multi-wipe mechanics. It is going to get really old, really quick if to do content you keep incurring 8 hours of grindback. I am not saying dumb it down, or allow for zerg bashing of open world content. But people are going to get extremely frustrated if they keep hitting a wall because some people want to have action console titles in their mmo. Two great tastes, unlike peanut butter and chocolate, that are not going to taste good together.
  • I believe they talked about overkill playing a role in the durability mechanic. The more you are overkilled, the more dura you lose on death. We already know that if your gear breaks you will need to do more to repair it. 
  • As McStackerson pointed out, there is an "epic fail" mechanic involved that will hurt you depending on how much you fail, it might as well hinder you for a while to participate in the fight again since you will be busy to repair your broken gear.
    To the topic itself, I'm not on board with dying as part of the general design philosophy. I think a death should reflect a series of miss management of fighting resources not a "you just have been picked to die".
    Standing >>to much<< in a fire. Healers over blowing their heals and just not having the mana to heal what's necessery and so on that's what should lead to deaths.
    I think there should be a bit of a counterbalance especially when you just start to learn a boss in the form of a resurrection, but basing every big fight around dying and resurrecting never sat well with me.
    It makes a sacrifical death ever so more epic.<3
  • I'd be more interested in tricky mechanics that need to be countered, than bosses just having an "I Win" button. 

    Nothing is more frustrating than doing everything right and still getting killed in a boss fight simply because the boss was designed that way. I think this concept is lazy and lacks imagination. 

    I'd be on board with bosses having an attack that can one shot a tank IF the party didn't block/interrupt/dispell or otherwise beat the attack with game mechanics.

    For example, Boss A has an attack that does 10,000 damage. Typical high end raid tank has 2000hp. The party, consisting of 8 people, needs to stack in the tank to spread the damage out. If all 8 people are in the attack sweep, everyone roughly gets 1250 damage done. The party needs to have at least 5 other people to stack on the tank to keep him alive, but with only 6, everyone in the attack takes 1666 damage, and will likely kill some of the lower HP classes (healer probably) so it's important that everyone collapses in to spread out the damage.

    This to me is interesting and fun. Just randomly dying because it's "epic boss damage" is Zzzzzzzzz.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    I appreciate what you are saying about enhanced death may not be fun. Honesty I do.
    But no one has offered an alternative way to ensure that a bigger boss does more damage than a smaller boss.

    If you can can simply bypass the bulk of the damage by dying and rezzing, it is in itself a kind of exploit if resurrection is cheap. It makes the bigger bosses existance pointless as he does no more effective damage than the lesser boss.

    So aside from 'I dont like it because' do you have an alternate solution to the real problem other than negative health. [NB I am not saying you have to pay it. I mean give a choice of if you want to stay in the fight you must pay the death charge to stay in the fight. Otherwise you can leave the fight, rezz far away and avoid the death cost instead.]

    Do you not see bypassing damage through death/rezz zombie groups as an exploitable problem ?

    Personally I find it an insult facing off against an epic boss that merely farts in your direction. The more epic the boss, the more damage to more people it should be able to do. Humanoids are mere ants in comparison and should be squashed with ease. The challenge is in overcoming those odds. Surely ? Are we not being spoilt with easy mode ?
  • For clarification I am not saying all bosses should wipe and one shot anyone and everyone. What I am asking for is a wide range of bosses across the whole spectrum with varying magnitudes of power. But within that spectrum at the high end (ie truly epic), is where this problem is directed.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    I like the durability angle. If the weaker badass boss hits the tank and kills him, he will likely not suffer as much gear damage. If the stronger badass boss hits the tank and wipes him, he might come to with all broken crappy equipment.

    This seems to fit into what you are looking for. I think charging more to heal a player because of overkill punishes the player that wiped, the healer, and all other party members the healer is responsible for.

    I understand it's a team effort, but being a guy down is a huge penalty, having to pay more due to how much life he had before he took the final blow seems odd.

    Maybe some sort of additional debuff timer for "going" twice your hit points into the negatives, kind of like a fear-factor. As a player, you might not be scared, but your character should be crapping themselves in anticipation of it happening again. This, however, will likely not go over to well.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    Fear factor to go with durability is an interesting idea. If bards can increase moral or combat efficiency, perhaps hitting that same moral or combat efficiency would be an alternate avenue. But that in itself will leave the team less and less able to overcome the challenge. So perseverance will actually not be rewarded, but penalised.

    With the overkill, you immediately know the threat you are facing. If its too much...walk away...come back better equipped  for the challenge or with more players. If you persevere the challenge will not become any easier or harder. It simply is what it is. If this adversary is too much, then that should be accepted.

    The problem with the modern game is the player 'always' wins with verying degrees of challenge. Some foes should be unbeatable and need to be sidestepped. Sometimes not wiping long enough to achieve an objective should be all that can be asked.
    IMHO...is that too hard core ?
  • I like the concept of a boss being tough, and having to force some players to come back better prepared later. However, is Ashes has suggested levels for dungeons and things this would be hard to do. If the suggested level is 35, and a group of level 35 players gets wiped every time they try, IS will hear all their cries.

    Without suggested levels, this would be awesome.

    But, in my experience (especially in D&D) if players see something that looks killable, they don't walk away. I am personally not a fan of being able to slaughter anything you come across at any time.
  • Reminds me of “Absolute Virtue” from FF11, took a guild a couple of weeks to spawn it and the boss could use all ultimates in the game. It took a couple of years before someone managed to kill it...

    The drops from it was the best, but it didn’t break the game. I think something like this would be nice, giving the most hardcore fanatics something to strive for and the rest to dream about.
  • This sort of 'overkill' where you need to be ressurected longer depending on the amount of damage you took would get boring rather quickly and become annoying for most people. Also it's just not very immersive I mean I would understand longer ressurection if your limbs got blown off and I doubt they will add something like that into the game.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    This sort of 'overkill' where you need to be ressurected longer depending on the amount of damage you took would get boring rather quickly and become annoying for most people. Also it's just not very immersive I mean I would understand longer ressurection if your limbs got blown off and I doubt they will add something like that into the game.
    Yes it could get very old reall quick if all bosses induced overkill. I dont think I can or will argue with that. This is supposed to be edge cases for world enders and such that are not your basic run of the mill bad guys. I wouldnt expect the majority of bosses to have much of an overkill as such bosses wont do anywhere near the same amount of damage.
    ie. Overkill will scale with the the power of the adversary.

    Other than that how do you make a boss that one shots someone any different to any other boss that one shots someone ? How do you design that its intended to face off against 200 people vs one deigned to face off 5 people ? Without overkill there is no difference. You simply resurrect...with identical cost.

    Immersive ... with ressurection voiding any enemy power ?
  • I think there are likely many ways to differentiate between two bosses even if both have an attack that can wipe you in one hit. Bosses skill, attack types, and weaknesses all play a part in that.

    I think the equipment degrade is the best solution. Yes, it will over time and multiple deaths render a player potentially useless, but that's when the party chooses to leave and fight again later or potentially wipe.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    But we are not comparing bosses with different skills ...we are comparing bosses with different magnitude of power. You are comparing apples and cake ;) Comparing bosses with different abilities is not the issue here.
  • Rune_Relic said:

    Yes it could get very old reall quick if all bosses induced overkill. I dont think I can or will argue with that. This is supposed to be edge cases for world enders and such that are not your basic run of the mill bad guys. I wouldnt expect the majority of bosses to have much of an overkill as such bosses wont do anywhere near the same amount of damage.
    ie. Overkill will scale with the the power of the adversary.

    Other than that how do you make a boss that one shots someone any different to any other boss that one shots someone ? How do you design that its intended to face off against 200 people vs one deigned to face off 5 people ? Without overkill there is no difference. You simply resurrect...with identical cost.

    Immersive ... with ressurection voiding any enemy power ?
    Sorry, I was answering the question "Other than that how do you make a boss that one shots someone any different to any other boss that one shots someone ?"
  • I do like the idea behind this, it makes sense that it should take longer to bring someone back who got hit and ripped apart compared to someone who just got shot. You have to put the body back together first :P
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    Azathoth said:
    Rune_Relic said:

    Yes it could get very old reall quick if all bosses induced overkill. I dont think I can or will argue with that. This is supposed to be edge cases for world enders and such that are not your basic run of the mill bad guys. I wouldnt expect the majority of bosses to have much of an overkill as such bosses wont do anywhere near the same amount of damage.
    ie. Overkill will scale with the the power of the adversary.

    Other than that how do you make a boss that one shots someone any different to any other boss that one shots someone ? How do you design that its intended to face off against 200 people vs one deigned to face off 5 people ? Without overkill there is no difference. You simply resurrect...with identical cost.

    Immersive ... with ressurection voiding any enemy power ?
    Sorry, I was answering the question "Other than that how do you make a boss that one shots someone any different to any other boss that one shots someone ?"
    Oh right sorry. Got the wrong end of the thought process again :)
    Yeah dont get me wrong the idea of gear degradation as an avenue to represent boss magnitude is a valid one. We just differ on the being punished for perseverance aspect.

  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    BCGiant said:
    I do like the idea behind this, it makes sense that it should take longer to bring someone back who got hit and ripped apart compared to someone who just got shot. You have to put the body back together first :P
    Get squashed by an elephant is not the same as being squashed by a mountain. You might still be recognisable after being sat on by an elephant :D

    Seriously though it has actually made me think about how wrapped in cotton wool we have become to the point of Dev sanctioned exploit. Now I am by no means the hardest of hardcore and can often stand on the opposite side of the fence to be honest. But we do have a fundamental issue.

    Death is cheap. Death has become so cheap that resurrection isn't even given a second thought. It is taken for granted by 'nearly every' if not 'every' modern game. It has come to the point in ESO as an example where amour sets were made to make resurrection free and instant for many players. The result was, instead of people using tanks to mitigate damage or healers to repair damage (using vast amounts of resources and seriously crippled damage for such defence), you just had all out damage dealers with instant resurrection. So instead of dealing with the damage, they simply bypassed it through the death mechanism. They were literally having their cake and eating it too.

    Thats a game design problem that is now exploitable. The same methodology can be applied to any PvE or PvP encounter. If death has no value, what is the point of combat ?
Sign In or Register to comment.