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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.
Boss mechanics
Boss mechanics are really something i hope IS will be succesfull with. And i mean succesfull from class and group composition point of view. Too many times in mmos bossess are more or less about dps check, even there would be some kind if tricky mechanic behind the fight. At the end its still just about dps.
First step is to get balance between tanking, healing, damaging and supporting. Making it really work like quad system instead of holy trinity. That is the starting point, but still not enough. Now there should be different kind of boss mechanics, which are not all about dps. Making some fights more about supporting and surviving would be really nice to have. Making buffing and shielding allies or making CCs and debuffs on boss more important than dps are the real options.
On top of that if hybrid class combinations are equally valueable in groups than pure dps, pure healer and pure tank, then i guess IS has truely nailed it.
First step is to get balance between tanking, healing, damaging and supporting. Making it really work like quad system instead of holy trinity. That is the starting point, but still not enough. Now there should be different kind of boss mechanics, which are not all about dps. Making some fights more about supporting and surviving would be really nice to have. Making buffing and shielding allies or making CCs and debuffs on boss more important than dps are the real options.
On top of that if hybrid class combinations are equally valueable in groups than pure dps, pure healer and pure tank, then i guess IS has truely nailed it.
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...or Hogger...
Kappa
Also if bosses can be beaten with different strategies, that would be nice too. It would give different group compositions a chance to do it own way.
I hope there will be decent amount of challenge or at least there will be different level bosses so theres something to everybody. I just hope its not like in Albion Online where you need only think your build from PvP point of view, because PvE content is just so faceroll and you dont have to think your gear or build PvE wise at all.
While DPS checks have their place, I don't personally see rage timers as a valid way to implement them. I mean, if I'm the boss and I have 40 people attacking me, I'm not going to wait 6 minutes before I let lose on them - if I have the ability to do 500% more damage, I'm going to do that from the start.
If you want a 6 minute timer on an encounter, have the encounter call his mate down the hall - who then takes 6 minutes to get there. If you don't kill the first encounter in time, you are left fighting two boss encounters at the same time.
I've said it before, I think, but I hope they look to EQ2 as a basis for their raid development.
EQ2 made use of CC - even though boss mobs were immune to CC in general, in some fights it was essential in relation to controlling adds. They could take it further, and Wildstars CC armor mechanic is a good way to do so.
That said, with things like raid content (and even harder single group content), I don't expect the content the game starts out with to be anything other than rudimentary and/or proof of concept. They would want to put encounters in place to see what the playerbase do in order to defeat them, and then develop content on from there.
I know in most MMO's I've raided in, the best raid content started to come 12 - 24 months after release.
I know I personally won't be judging the raiding scene (maybe a better term to use than "end game") based on what is available at launch or soon thereafter.
Considering this I believe it wouldn't be fair for us - the players - to NOT expect something above average from the start (and not just slightly above average). If the year was 1999 I'd understand.
It isn't an ideas thing that makes me think the first raid level encounters will be somewhat simple. I mean, as you pointed out, there is no end of inspiration for encounter design out there.
I'd be surprised if more than 10 people have a hand in raid encounter design, and I can tell you now that 1 million players will come up with things 10 developers would never have thought of.
Once the developers see the kinds of things we come up with, they can start planning encounters around that.
True, they will need to adjust present and future encounters so as to not allow certain "tricks" the players will use to avoid the designed hard(er) parts.
Yet, I don't think this is going to be easy considering the amount of class combinations and such that we have. If only one "customized by sub-class" ability is going to cause the issues, then there is even a chance that ability will be changed and not the boss fight.
That was always the case I think, with every game. In my post I was referring to the quality of fights more than the "hidden" Q&A testing that will take place when the game releasesI'd like to see the "dungeon journal(s)" (like in WoW) to be player-made, or at least until all of its secrets are known to the community. That way even older encounters can still feel fresh and new. At the most I'd like to see 'Wanted' posters up near where the boss was encountered with maybe a rumor about one or two of its abilities.
Players may gather the information themselves, and some of it may even be shared, but there won't be a single repository - in game or otherwise - where you can go to find all the information on all the encounters.
That means, to me, they are fine with some whining.
They have developers from games that have produced what I consider to be the best raid encounters ever produced for an MMORPG (that I have played), so my hopes are high.
Lets say we have a boss, which summons at phase 2 a really powerful monster (add), which is slightly faster than players and it starts to hunt them.
- Maybe off-tank can take the aggro and take the high damage.
- Maybe it can be CCed with slows/roots/stuns so it cant reach players.
- Maybe some class can speed buff allies so it cant reach players.
- Maybe shield buffs absorbs enough damage to survive.
- Maybe off-healing helps to heal through high damage.
- Maybe debuffer can reduce the incoming damage. (EDIT)
And this was just an example how every role can be made important and how different fights can be created so those can be defeated with different strategies.For example:
The Boss has 20 underlying abilities/mechanics but only uses 5 in any given fight.
Boss looks at the plays going against him and chooses the abilities based on that.
-Group Melee DSP heavy..flies into the air for parts, tail sweeps for back damage
-Group ranged DSP heavy...jumps to ranged, puts up temp damage shield against ranged
-Group Heal heavy... extra AoE damage to push healers
If there isn't real unbalances in group composition, they are chosen at random.
- Tank should be able to control enemies and absorb a lot of damage.
- Healers should be able to protect and heal allies.
- Support should be able to crowd control, buff, and debuff.
The damage should be be pretty even but with support buffing allies, make it go faster. If this was the case then mechanics could be built around enemy control so that bosses aren't just one big tank and spank. Of course each archetype will be closer to one end or the other on the trinity and each subclass would push them in one direction or the other. Then on top of that we have a limited action bar so it wouldn't be too crazy to see each class get one or two hard hitters that you could slot in instead of a cc or utility.IDK, I'm tired of the dps mindset and how it has poisoned a lot of what it means to be a valued teammate or responsible raid member. It has gone from people knowing what to do in a situation to everyone being mindless glass canons that complain when a fight takes more than a few minutes.
Play a game with good raid content and DPS knowing what they are doing is as important - or moreso - than the tank and healers knowing what they are doing.
I expect AoC will have a lot of Tank n' Spank based on the Dev's desire to make all class varieties viable. I also expect a lot of chaos inducing mechanics to hide this and to make it more interesting than a Tank n' Spank.
Non-instanced, open-world, oppurtunistic events, provide limits on what devs can do for balancing, thus reducing it back to a tank n' spank model.
tl;dr - Based on what the Devs said they would do, I would expect a lot of chaotic things like AoE to step out of and adds, on top of Tank and Spank mechanics.