If Intrepid could somehow completely prevent DPS meters, either by design or by ... I dunno, magic... they could make bosses that only the people with enough 'focus slots' could beat. The problem would be that those people would find them easy, other people would find them hard, and there would be less ways to understand why in both cases.
Yep, and this is why I think that it's gonna be just the regular vicious cycle. And if those people at the top say that the content is super easy and boring, it'll be just like Noaani said, everyone (or at least a lot of people) below will believe them and might not even attempt the content. Or even if they do attempt it - they won't be the ones with huge capacity, so they'll find it super hard or even impossible. At which point the top people are bored, the aspiring people can't beat the content and you have both sides of the spectrum either leaving your game or endlessly complaining about the content in question, which would only confuse Intrepid cause you obviously can't appeal to both groups at the same time.
The only real solution I could see to this is some form of a catalyst item that you use on bosses during the raid, which would change how the boss behaves. It could be awarded through quests of some particular actions.
For example, a catalyst that's tailored for the "meter people" would boost the boss' overall complexity (and randomization of mechanics) and bump up the chances of certain drops by some amount.
The "layman's" catalyst would make the boss more of a dmg sponge with fewer mechanics, so people can just concentrate on their own rotations rather than both the dance of mechanics and dps. And there'd be no boost to loot.
The casual one would decrease the stats of the boss and would decrease the mechanics variety. Obviously would have the lowest drop with maybe even some drops missing.
In order to fully activate any of those 3 versions of the boss, you'll need to use all 40 catalysts of the same type during the fight (that is if we only apply this to raid bosses). If the boss wasn't killed after the usage - the catalysts go back to their users. If the boss was stolen (killed by a non-og-raid people) - same shit.
This way you'd have open world tailored experiences that are also "equalized" in their complexity, while also accounting for the skill lvl of the players. The pvp for/around the boss still remains. The encounter itself can still be repeated, and maybe even in a different version if so desired. The top rarity drops are still mainly farmed by the people who can farm them (the <10%), while the boss itself can be content for more people if they manage to catch its spawn in time.
What's the glaring cons of this suggestion that I'm missing, cause I'm sure there's some.
If Intrepid could somehow completely prevent DPS meters, either by design or by ... I dunno, magic... they could make bosses that only the people with enough 'focus slots' could beat. The problem would be that those people would find them easy, other people would find them hard, and there would be less ways to understand why in both cases.
Yep, and this is why I think that it's gonna be just the regular vicious cycle. And if those people at the top say that the content is super easy and boring, it'll be just like Noaani said, everyone (or at least a lot of people) below will believe them and might not even attempt the content. Or even if they do attempt it - they won't be the ones with huge capacity, so they'll find it super hard or even impossible. At which point the top people are bored, the aspiring people can't beat the content and you have both sides of the spectrum either leaving your game or endlessly complaining about the content in question, which would only confuse Intrepid cause you obviously can't appeal to both groups at the same time.
The only real solution I could see to this is some form of a catalyst item that you use on bosses during the raid, which would change how the boss behaves. It could be awarded through quests of some particular actions.
For example, a catalyst that's tailored for the "meter people" would boost the boss' overall complexity (and randomization of mechanics) and bump up the chances of certain drops by some amount.
The "layman's" catalyst would make the boss more of a dmg sponge with fewer mechanics, so people can just concentrate on their own rotations rather than both the dance of mechanics and dps. And there'd be no boost to loot.
The casual one would decrease the stats of the boss and would decrease the mechanics variety. Obviously would have the lowest drop with maybe even some drops missing.
In order to fully activate any of those 3 versions of the boss, you'll need to use all 40 catalysts of the same type during the fight (that is if we only apply this to raid bosses). If the boss wasn't killed after the usage - the catalysts go back to their users. If the boss was stolen (killed by a non-og-raid people) - same shit.
This way you'd have open world tailored experiences that are also "equalized" in their complexity, while also accounting for the skill lvl of the players. The pvp for/around the boss still remains. The encounter itself can still be repeated, and maybe even in a different version if so desired. The top rarity drops are still mainly farmed by the people who can farm them (the <10%), while the boss itself can be content for more people if they manage to catch its spawn in time.
What's the glaring cons of this suggestion that I'm missing, cause I'm sure there's some.
For me, in my experience, no glaring 'cons' exist. This is the only way I know that this is normally achieved. MMOs just have to jump through more hoops to do the same sort of thing that other games do by changing difficulty or encounter 'type'.
However, Ashes is Open World Contested bosses, so I guess we could count that as one.
Back to the DPS Meter issue though, the only problem I'd see with just making the bosses 'hard to beat due to overwhelming focus' is that the actual thing a DPS meter does (let's use the example of me 'having the Combat Log and then parsing it using literally Excel) is keep track of a flow for you.
If an aspiring group has to attempt the boss 60 times because they 'can't pass the focus check', they may still eventually get lucky. If the 'high focus' group can farm it after 6 attempts, they will move on. Not everyone is a 'winner' in Ashes, so it's unlikely to matter as much.
Steven's choosing between two forms of frustration, and slightly choosing between two 'target groups for that frustration'. It's probably fine either way.
And from what I understand, all boss designs usually come down to just dps gates. Yes, you can have countless cool mechanics, but there's always gonna be some form of dps gate, because that's where the difficulty comes from in the fight. If the boss is on an arbitrary timer (or especially a literal one) that counts down to its ultimate raid wipe ability - of course you'll have to squeeze out your raid group until the very last drop of dps comes out, because you gotta beat the timer.
This is true, but you see it from the bad side focusing on "you have to do enough DPS" becoming => "DPS is the main issue"
Lets take one of most famous "hard boss" Arthas 25 HM, was at the biggest spike of wow golden age, and was really a big fight a really challenging one. the NM mode was already a tough fight also.
Did Arthas need an insane DPS around 90%+ of the "perfect" DPS people could bring ? yep. Was it enough to kill boss ? absolutely no, even a raid 25 team with the good raid comp and all people doing their 100% damages could totally wipe and wipe again.
Because this fight has LOT of mechanics, which are hard to deal with, and where the mistake of one is the wipe of all.
And a good way to explain all is taking just a little (really) part of this fight : 2nd val'kyr + defile.
Valkyr : 3 winged lady spawn, grab one random character (out of the 25) and travel with them to the closest border (circle arena with border being empty so you fall). They had many life and you had to burn their life asap. it already asked a little mechanic : have all 3 valkyr getting the same way, so the raid had to gather middle "slightly" on a side (enough to be sure hte 3 valkyr goes the same way, to have them gathered to make this big DPS easy)
Defile : one character is targetted by arthas and a black area spawn under his feet, after 1 second, all people in take damages and the area grow for each people hit. So again, the raid gather at same area, and move at once far from the defile area.
Separate each mechanic are not so hard (even if each can easily be source of death or even for defile a wipe). but at 2nd and 5th time of the fight they appear it becomes really tricky : they spawn nearly together... so you have to be all in middle (where the mistake on defile will be the biggest problem) move as late as possible (to have valkyr have the most travel to do so most time to kill them) BUT as soon as possible to avoid any little tic of defile (most of time it was enough to have a snowball effect and in the end get it in most if not all area)
it was a BIG DPS check, which was hard to do because mechanics were hard to deal with
reduce the life of valkyr (so DPS check) this part become easy.
Now lets take soul's bosses they are mostly 100% around avoid (we can consider "mechanics" due to the design of the games) ok, so you can play safe, wait your time to hit as safely as possible. the fight could last 30 minutes, or more, you still do it. just long, full of pressure.
Now lets take a limit for example of 20 minutes, meaning that each time the boss does a skill that is its best time to hit you HAVE TO go to hit him, the fight gets harder, you can't allow yourself to play perfectly safe.
reduce this limit to 15 minutes, now even skills where hitting will need a hard avoid just after, or a "perfect frame" to be allwo to go to hit the boss... the fight is even harder.
Just because i added a timer limit to a fight, i made it harder.
Combat tracker in WoW or FFXIV (2 MMORPG currently considered with the most challenging PvE) are not so usefull to understand the hardest fight.
I did "high end" on both...
and for FFXIV i even was in a team of people that wanted to build from fresh their own strategy : no one of us watched any kind of small information about bosses before we killed them ourselves... FFXIV is far more around "DPS gate" than wow in my opinion, but what makes us struggle to fight was mostly understand mechanics and find how to deal with... The DPS was always our last problem, and in fact because we all mastered well our class, and due to building step by step strategy... when we manage to see the last part of fight, trying to get the "most damages we could" was clearly not a problem.
The need of DPS forced us to play "as perfect as possible" no more no less. (and we speak about a game were 2/3 if not 3/4 of Global Cooldown of healers are spent in... damages ^^" for healers the difficulty was timing their heal perfectly to soak the high spike of damages while keeping as much DPS as possible)
Combat tracker in WoW or FFXIV (2 MMORPG currently considered with the most challenging PvE) are not so usefull to understand the hardest fight.
The need of DPS forced us to play "as perfect as possible" no more no less.
From what I know both WoW's and FF14's raids are scripted, is that right? And from what I remember, at least some of FF11's bosses were quite randomized.
Now the question I have, are the ff14/wow bosses interesting because they have a proper "culmination" to the battle (especially in ff14's case), with the intensity of the fight growing throughout the fight, or was it just the fact of overcoming the peak difficulty of the boss?
What I'm trying to get at is this: would those bosses still be interesting if their skillset was completely randomized right from the first second of the fight? Or am I wrong and they were already randomized?
yes combat tracker as i said will help a lot to master more the game mechanics and the classes/builds. so a faster progress early. and will be a help for each balance patch, and a small help on bosses (mainly to adapt your build/rotation for this specific boss with its specific timing, etc etc)
And i can understand you think sad/problematic to have this speed up. But the slow due to lack of data can be considered a false difficulty.
Personally, i hope to have the fight designer able to generates fights like the hardest we saw in other MMORPGs. Because those really hard fight were not only about strong DPS but a really good personnal analysis from the players. It would reduce the impact of combat tracker to master the fight to really low, but ALSO would reduce impact of guides a lot.
And this is kind of my point. If you require a tracker to figure out how to beat a boss - to me that's a badly designed boss. Why would I need a separate tool to figure out which % of damage I'm missing on top of all the other mechanics that I need to do?
To me, it is a well designed boss.
However, this is only true if you consider a boss to be part content, part puzzle.
That said, I agree with your point that we shouldnt need tools outside of the game - this is why the tracker should be built in to the game.
Combat tracker in WoW or FFXIV (2 MMORPG currently considered with the most challenging PvE) are not so usefull to understand the hardest fight.
The need of DPS forced us to play "as perfect as possible" no more no less.
From what I know both WoW's and FF14's raids are scripted, is that right? And from what I remember, at least some of FF11's bosses were quite randomized.
Now the question I have, are the ff14/wow bosses interesting because they have a proper "culmination" to the battle (especially in ff14's case), with the intensity of the fight growing throughout the fight, or was it just the fact of overcoming the peak difficulty of the boss?
What I'm trying to get at is this: would those bosses still be interesting if their skillset was completely randomized right from the first second of the fight? Or am I wrong and they were already randomized?
WoW and FF14 bosses are not randomized generally. It's almost impossible to compare them, a boss of the non-random kind is designed (for me personally) more as a spectacle or a speedrun.
I don't find them interesting, so I don't play those games. I believe I can see why others find them interesting (you can see it in Monster Hunter, a sufficiently 'overgeared' player can defeat certain higher level Monsters just by 'playing perfectly' but if you're not overgeared ENOUGH you still have to deal with its 'Rage' and 'Desperation' mechanics, even more perfectly... or you could play with much less stats and have to use tools, terrain, and sometimes teamwork)
I want to play Ashes because I saw (and experienced) the FF11 type bosses within Ashes, and hope for more of those.
That said, I agree with your point that we shouldnt need tools outside of the game - this is why the tracker should be built in to the game.
Ahh, this is exactly why I said "separate" and not "3d party" or "outside" And while you're here, I forget, were EQ2's bosses randomized or scripted? Or was the randomization tied to boss stage, so it always became harder throughout the fight.
I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to have a fun boss fight w/o the timer of dps (the rising difficulty is that timer). Or would the hardcore pvers see such a fight cheap and boring (the fight being completely randomized and at peak difficulty right from the start)?
Yes, that is always true. I'm just trying to find the single middle ground, if there even is one Most likely this is a pointless endeavor, but that is why I usually mostly ignore this thread until I find a new way to try and suggest a middle ground for participants of this discussion
That said, I agree with your point that we shouldnt need tools outside of the game - this is why the tracker should be built in to the game.
Ahh, this is exactly why I said "separate" and not "3d party" or "outside" And while you're here, I forget, were EQ2's bosses randomized or scripted? Or was the randomization tied to boss stage, so it always became harder throughout the fight.
I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to have a fun boss fight w/o the timer of dps (the rising difficulty is that timer). Or would the hardcore pvers see such a fight cheap and boring (the fight being completely randomized and at peak difficulty right from the start)?
I consider myself hardcore ENOUGH at PvE to be an answer-er here.
I don't need rage mechanics, other people need rage mechanics. Lemme explain.
If the boss does not rage, it's just '100% from moment one', then I have to be 100% from moment One. I have to learn and adapt in timeframes on the order of seconds, and react to things and UNDERSTAND what happened because of my reaction in fractions of seconds, right down to 'individual frames'.
Bring it on.
It's other people who don't enjoy this, it certainly ain't me.
If anything, it's the opposite, because I don't want to have to go through the entire easy first part every time I want to practice the harder second part. It's not there for me. It's there for a different player type.
So while we wait for Noaani to answer with his pov, here's a question for you. Would you need a dps meter for such a fight, considering that there's no "timer" for the fight? The enrage isn't coming so it's not necessary for you to have the most perfect build that puts out the most perfect dps.
So while we wait for Noaani to answer with his pov, here's a question for you. Would you need a dps meter for such a fight, considering that there's no "timer" for the fight? The enrage isn't coming so it's not necessary for you to have the most perfect build that puts out the most perfect dps.
It's not a DPS meter, it's a Combat Tracker.
A Combat Tracker is a way to 'watch the replay' of a battle, skipping unnecessary parts, and sometimes with more info than a player might have had from their perspective unless they read at significantly above average human speed (Combat Log).
The DPS part of this is often more relevant to me to find out (in FFXI for example) when someone did TOO MUCH DAMAGE, not when they didn't do enough.
Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.
Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.
That said, I agree with your point that we shouldnt need tools outside of the game - this is why the tracker should be built in to the game.
Ahh, this is exactly why I said "separate" and not "3d party" or "outside" And while you're here, I forget, were EQ2's bosses randomized or scripted? Or was the randomization tied to boss stage, so it always became harder throughout the fight.
I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to have a fun boss fight w/o the timer of dps (the rising difficulty is that timer). Or would the hardcore pvers see such a fight cheap and boring (the fight being completely randomized and at peak difficulty right from the start)?
They were a mix of both types (the only game I know to do so).
Top end content doesnt need DPS checks, but they do need fail conditions. DPS checks are just one option for adding a fail condition to an encounter - there are many other options, and a good game will take advantage of as many of them ad they can.
Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.
Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.
Ok, this would probably go a bit too deep into the "middle ground searching" territory, but at this point I'm just curious about a pov other than my own on this topic.
If I understand correctly, you needed to see that course of events in the fight in the tracker in order to understand boss logic at that moment, right? What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?
I realize I didn't answer your question at all @NiKr.
Subconscious avoidance of a specific interaction.
I don't need the meter, my teammates do. For them, I AM the meter. Hopefully you know what I mean enough that I don't really need to say it and provoke the potential ire of a certain type of person.
I don't use combat trackers, I just need a combat log that I can access after the fact, because people can't pull references directly out of my brain.
Right, so then just this question remains then and I'll address this to both of you (Azherae and Noaani) and go to sleep so I'll read the answer later. Gotta have at least a bit of sleep before the super hype Sumeru reveal stream in Genshin whatever your answers are, this has been a good discussion for me, thx for sharing your povs.
What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?
Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.
Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.
Ok, this would probably go a bit too deep into the "middle ground searching" territory, but at this point I'm just curious about a pov other than my own on this topic.
If I understand correctly, you needed to see that course of events in the fight in the tracker in order to understand boss logic at that moment, right? What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?
Completely randomly?
Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.
On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.
Other than that, if you kept at least 'chances for Enmity to influence the attack's main target' but otherwise completely random, then yes, you just have 'most of FFXI' at that point, bearing in mind that the boss is limited by TP and cannot 'just spam powerful abilities if no one is attacking it' (given how TP gain works it CAN spam those abilities as soon as about 10 people are attacking it).
Right, so then just this question remains then and I'll address this to both of you (Azherae and Noaani) and go to sleep so I'll read the answer later. Gotta have at least a bit of sleep before the super hype Sumeru reveal stream in Genshin whatever your answers are, this has been a good discussion for me, thx for sharing your povs.
What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?
Randomization (complete randomization) is where you need a tracker most.
You want to look back at a pull (successful or not) and see why that pull succeeded or failed. What ratio of abilities did the boss use, were there abilities used one after the other that caused specific issues, and if so, is there anything you can do about that next time?
While it is absolutely possible to look this up in your logs, a guild based combat tracker is essentially nothing more than a faster means of looking this up and comparing the logs of those in your guild.
It's when trackers get removed from a guild setting that what some people consider to be issues start to happen.
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2022
I don't understand how completely random defeats the Trinity System and lessens the RP aspect of combat.
Trinity and RP is about how the group uses the strengths and weaknesses of each class in the group to defeat encounters.
Random attacks from the boss lessens efficiency of defeating the encounter by making it challenging to anticipate what's coming next. Also makes it challenging to guarantee win conditions.
But, none of that affects the Trinity System or the RP aspect of combat.
DPS Meters and META tactics that result in cookie cutter builds lessen the RP aspect of combat.
Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.
On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.
We could maybe finally move on from boring "agro the mob and stand in this place" gameplay to fun and engaging "track the mob's agro and defend the person who he agroes on next". I, as a tank, would love that shift personally.
Randomization (complete randomization) is where you need a tracker most.
You want to look back at a pull (successful or not) and see why that pull succeeded or failed. What ratio of abilities did the boss use, were there abilities used one after the other that caused specific issues, and if so, is there anything you can do about that next time?
But what if that same combination of boss attacks never repeats again? Wouldn't that have been wasted time spent going over smth that might never return?
I don't understand how completely random defeats the Trinity System and lessens the RP aspect of combat.
I think Azherae meant it as "tank is no longer tanking, because the boss is never tied to the tank and instead just runs around". Some other roles might get diminished too, if the boss' and class design doesn't account for the randomness of the fight. Maybe healer is never needed because the boss does some weak random shit. Maybe archer is useless because he's constantly getting attacked and get utilize his range dps (though it could be argued that archer's kiting role is played at that moment). I'm sure there's a few other possible hole in the trinity system and roleplaying aspect of it that appear once the boss is no longer controllable by the players in any way. The tank is just the most glaring one.
1
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2022
Um... So... RP is more than just each class efficiently fulfilling their primary Trinity role...especially in Ashes.
Which is why it's important to not just look at numbers and instead check to see what else an individual is doing for the group.
There is more to being a main tank than just holding aggro. And there is definitely more to playing a Tank/x than just holding aggro.
Ashes encounters are designed with the expectation of 8-person groups that have one of each Primary Archetype, so whatever randomness a boss might have... that's still going to be a part of the design.
I think we know that "completely random" has to be hyperbole. No boss is going to have attacks that are 100% random. I don't even know what that could possibly mean unless we have AI always procedurally generating brand new attacks on the fly.
I don't understand what can be meant by "maybe healer is never needed". A healer is never needed means that no one ever takes damage. And that must mean the group is so over-powered compared to the boss that a combat tracker is irrelevant.
"One of the design elements that we're implementing into our raids is that the raid will not be exactly the same every single time. You're going to have variables that can't necessarily be pre-planned out for. You can pre-plan out for a lot of the raid like how many DPS do you need and healers and support; where the key position and all that kind of stuff; but I think the compelling aspect of Ashes raiding will be the difficulty in achieving this content and having that content change from session to session as well. We want there to be variables that get manifested by you know what type of node got developed elsewhere. Is he going to have acolytes or cultists? What will the acolytes have skills [available] to them? What kit is the boss gonna have? What available skill repertoire will the boss be able to [wield]? ... A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid kind of takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players."
---Steven
Just because you "didn't need a healer" in one run of the raid does not mean you won't need a healer when you return. Also, just because you don't "need" healing does not mean you won't want a Cleric. A Cleric is more than just a healer.
A Ranger/x is more than just ranged DPS. What else is that Ranger doing to aid the group when they aren't doing ranged DPS.
The Trinity System simply informs us that there is a rock-paper-scissors aspect to the strengths and weaknesses designed for each Archetype and that different Archetypes will want to rely on each other in a group to synergize strengths and mitigate weaknesses.
RP should primarily be about the Archetypes and how the Archetypes synergize their abilities with each other to defeat content. Trinity is mostly a meta-textual way of thinking about the underpinnings of combat.
If the group can defeat a boss without the Tank/x ever using aggro, that's OK. It doesn't diminish the Trinity System and it doesn't diminish RP.
If you can find a way to defeat a boss using all Tanks or all Clerics - that is still RP. And it doesn't really "defeat" the Trinity System unless defeating bosses with all Tanks or all Clerics is the rule, rather than the exception.
The Trinity System simply informs us that there is a rock-paper-scissors aspect to the strengths and weaknesses designed for each Archetype and that different Archetypes will want to rely on each other in a group to synergize strengths and mitigate weaknesses.
This is factually incorrect.
The trinity system is system whereby the tank stands in front of as many attacks as they can, keeping the target occupied, healers heal said tank, and any others that may take damage, and DPS deal out the damage.
The trinity system isnt some R/P/S system of class design, it is black and white roles within a group.
I'll tell you what has destroyed MMO's over the last 15 years even more than LFG systems, more than cross server content, more than daily quests or log in rewards - special little snowflake players that refuse to fall in line with the trinity system.
Want to make MMO's great again? Have a hard and fast trinity system where there is no room for ambiguity, no blurred lines, no "well, I'm a healer primary, but I've got my DPS bow out and I've taken Bard secondary, so put me in as a tank" people that think they can just be and do what ever and the rest of us need to accept that.
Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.
On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.
We could maybe finally move on from boring "agro the mob and stand in this place" gameplay to fun and engaging "track the mob's agro and defend the person who he agroes on next". I, as a tank, would love that shift personally.
You would. You are in the 'bring it on' category of player. I'll leave it to your personal experience to inform your perspective as to how many others like you there are.
Randomization (complete randomization) is where you need a tracker most.
You want to look back at a pull (successful or not) and see why that pull succeeded or failed. What ratio of abilities did the boss use, were there abilities used one after the other that caused specific issues, and if so, is there anything you can do about that next time?
But what if that same combination of boss attacks never repeats again? Wouldn't that have been wasted time spent going over smth that might never return?
That's usually easy to tell, but the entire reason you do that is so that you know that the issue was random and not with your plan, or you 'realize that you may also need to prepare people for that scenario' because the path through the fight might be so different. We're back to 'Jormungand' again (and I'd just go back to that topic). A 20-30 minute fight where multiple people are properly engaged, as we discussed there, means someone eventually misses something, possibly quite early in. (Even considering what this topic is, I prefer not to derail it, because despite what might currently be under discussion, I truly do 'see the purpose of this thread as giving Noaani a space to discuss with people and advocate for the suggestion given on behalf of me and others', glad to poke at boss design there though).
I don't understand how completely random defeats the Trinity System and lessens the RP aspect of combat.
I think Azherae meant it as "tank is no longer tanking, because the boss is never tied to the tank and instead just runs around". Some other roles might get diminished too, if the boss' and class design doesn't account for the randomness of the fight. Maybe healer is never needed because the boss does some weak random shit. Maybe archer is useless because he's constantly getting attacked and get utilize his range dps (though it could be argued that archer's kiting role is played at that moment). I'm sure there's a few other possible hole in the trinity system and roleplaying aspect of it that appear once the boss is no longer controllable by the players in any way. The tank is just the most glaring one.
This is another whole separate topic and I'm sure we could find some post to piggyback that discussion off of that 'no one is using'.
Anyways I have no answer for you, Dygz, that you are likely to 'understand'. Your definitions are not similar to mine. NiKr, I don't personally care about the Trinity system, 'hard tanking', or that type of combat role. TL is purported to be Weapon based, as is Onigiri, as is Elite Dangerous.
I'm not going into a discussion about 'player synergy vs player twitch skills vs player role' again, as it leads to things that my mind labels as contradictions even when I try to understand a certain point of view. I will gladly throw a bunch of data and answers at NiKr if you two want to hash that out, my personal request is that you make a new thread for it or use the 'Character Balance' one on the front page somewhere.
I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.
I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.
Nah, it's fine. I think I'm kinda done with this thread. At least for now. I understand that it's not the game that requires the combat trackers, but the people themselves. And changing people is wayyy harder than changing a game's design.
I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.
Nah, it's fine. I think I'm kinda done with this thread. At least for now. I understand that it's not the game that requires the combat trackers, but the people themselves. And changing people is wayyy harder than changing a game's design.
This is also my conclusion.
The top 10% of players are often led by the top less-than-1% of players, the 'shot-callers' in Raids, the 'Moguls' in Econ, etc. There's whole videos for just WoW about World First raid groups where the shot-caller explicitly doesn't even play in the raid because the amount of things you need to do and track is so 'much' that they are better off not.
From that (and massive discussion on the matter from that scene) we have the implication that content 'at limit' had a situation where the pioneers of it 1) had 30+ people, 2) (presumably) chose the one most observationally-endowed and possibly tactically skilled from their ranks to be in that role, in a game where WeakAuras and similar add-ons are a thing, and then 3) still concluded that it would be better if that person was only watching and commanding.
Because that's what the content required.
Go down one tier. Or two. There is a level at which that person 'can do it while playing', or at which 'they can do it in real time no WeakAuras no Combat Tracker'. If Steven's goal is 'I would like to cap everyone at this point, and make it so that the content is limited to groups with the sort of person who can do this with no external assistance' (let's go so far as to assume that me writing a Combat Log parser was off limits)...
Then he's just chosen his 'single digit percentage' by a different skillset than a game that allows Trackers. And this could easily be a functional goal. It 'creates a winner' by a factor that is a population selection based on something that could probably be outright genetic. But some would say skills are a gene lottery, so that's fine.
If anything, the thing I don't like about it, is that Trackers, particularly in games where there is true challenge, are a good way to spread out those 'skilled players', to allow them to form groups with less tactically skilled players rather than 'causing the friction and toxicity that comes with having no objective data'. I believe the latter can ultimately lead to a situation where all the 'skilled players' congregate together for success over time rather than leading and improving their less-skilled friends and counterparts.
I object to this game design style, despite 'being one of those players' with a group that has literally pushed through all that already, It's the sort of thing a more elitist/toxic version of me would design, which is why I usually doubt that Steven's stance is exactly what is presented as a whole. But either outcome is an accusation, either I'm saying 'this is performative (like YoshiP's stance)' where the 'you can't use Meters' is just a way to appease all the people who think they are bad while doing nothing about it...
Or I'm saying 'Steven is a toxic elitist who, as a leader, prefers a scenario where leaders have additional power and control because others don't have access to tools that can rival their abilities'.
But one can take the third option and take it in good faith, in which case, the response (from me at least) is 'see if someone can convince Steven that this will lead to one of the above and he should change stance'.
And that, I leave to Noaani and any staff Intrepid has who hold similar views, one step at a time.
But what if that same combination of boss attacks never repeats again? Wouldn't that have been wasted time spent going over smth that might never return?
The number of abilities that a mob would need to have to be able to assume this would be the case is fairly high.
If a mob had that number of abilities, it would mean that basically all mobs have the same abilities (there aren't all that many actual abilities - it is the combination of abilities that makes things interesting).
If a mobs have the same ability set, you will come across that same killer combination at some point, on another mob.
Keep in mind though, we are now well and truly out of any real world scenario here.
1
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Go down one tier. Or two. There is a level at which that person 'can do it while playing', or at which 'they can do it in real time no WeakAuras no Combat Tracker'. If Steven's goal is 'I would like to cap everyone at this point, and make it so that the content is limited to groups with the sort of person who can do this with no external assistance' (let's go so far as to assume that me writing a Combat Log parser was off limits)...
Then he's just chosen his 'single digit percentage' by a different skillset than a game that allows Trackers. And this could easily be a functional goal.
Go down one tier. Or two. There is a level at which that person 'can do it while playing', or at which 'they can do it in real time no WeakAuras no Combat Tracker'. If Steven's goal is 'I would like to cap everyone at this point, and make it so that the content is limited to groups with the sort of person who can do this with no external assistance' (let's go so far as to assume that me writing a Combat Log parser was off limits)...
Then he's just chosen his 'single digit percentage' by a different skillset than a game that allows Trackers. And this could easily be a functional goal.
Yes.
Well, I doubt you will see the same three options I do, but just in case you agreed with anything ELSE I said, which is it for you? Doesn't have to be so discrete.
1) Performative, it's impossible to stop trackers, meaning that the winners will be cheaters OR that they will be constantly having to prove they don't cheat (because there's no way to detect it, and the definition of Combat Tracker is confusing in the case of someone like me who can program parsers)
2) Elitism, where the ideal is that people like me form exclusive groups with others like me when it comes to top end encounter content (this applies regardless of the content type, most analysts of the type I mentioned function across disciplines because again... genetic)
3) You hope that Steven has a more permissive stance on the type of tracker that I can write, or perceive that if I write it myself and don't just download it, I'm still being rewarded for my personal skill and should be allowed to do so as long as I don't distribute it (in which case those punished would be those who don't write them).
4) Insert own.
I can see an interesting world in case #3 where my team could 'register their proprietary tracker with Intrepid so that they know how it works and can just ban OTHER people doing it the same way'.
Victory by Verran Patent Law.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2022
I think it's both 1 and 2.
Cheaters gonna cheat.
Elitists will strive to be elitists in any case.
The devs should not provide tools to make that easier for them.
What I'm trying to get at is this: would those bosses still be interesting if their skillset was completely randomized right from the first second of the fight? Or am I wrong and they were already randomized?
FFXIV are fight where there are close to 0 RNG (wow still more with "who will be targeted" that can be source of big mistake if people are not focused).
Skillset of bosses are for hardest boss (in FFXIV, the "really hard" being ultimate and to a lesser but still hard, the 4th/last of a tier raid) hard to deal with, and really unforgivable. putting a RNG without increasing the time you have to prepare could make it close to impossible.
A perfect example are tank bust, skills that can easily one shot a tank. many doesnt have anykind of cast bar, nothing call them (aside "it is the timer where the boss will do it") so if tanks and healer doesn't know "it is time" the tank will die... The "shield" healer cannot keep non stop its shield on tank (not enough mana for the whole fight and... he still needs to do DPS for enrage) and the tank doesnt have enough CD to have at least one activ any second of fight.
But FFXI showed RNG works well for high end difficulty, and even in recent MMORPG, lost ark recently showed it aswell... it is in fact like arena size, size of raid, game with/without healers (or even tank LA got no real tank)
Those are just elements that never avoid to do hard fight, but change how you can make the fight hard but not impossible. Devs knows their game, and have their own experience of previous fight so all those are never a problem.
Have to understand that when we reach top end, the fight design first have ton consider people able to play their class perfectly, so to give close to 100% of their potential DPS. Then those are people that understand well the game mechanic. Those two element won't vary from boss another because bind to the game. so if you want to do tough and really challenging fight, you HAVE TO include the need to be "close to perfect" in both of those point. This is where many games have "easy fight" because quite permissiv about those 2 base knowledge that allow top players to just faceroll the fight.
Also, there are MANY way to challenge the DPS of the raid... The "hard enrage" is the most common and the easiest to do for devs... but this is the only reason we see it everywhere.
In such situation, people also need ways to improve themselves close to "perfect"
edit : holy trinity (or even ... could see up to 4 roles with support like bard in FFXI being not healer, but really strong addition to group)
This is JUST another criteria of design. bind to the game mechanics
You can do a good MMORPG, with hard and engaging fight, with not this trinity,
Now, Ashes will have this trinity and maybe the 4 side (some people consider cleric will be healer, while bard will buff others but not heal... ) so all design have to push each role and not allow a "finalyl, if we play perfectly, we can avoid to take the cleric"
Comments
The only real solution I could see to this is some form of a catalyst item that you use on bosses during the raid, which would change how the boss behaves. It could be awarded through quests of some particular actions.
For example, a catalyst that's tailored for the "meter people" would boost the boss' overall complexity (and randomization of mechanics) and bump up the chances of certain drops by some amount.
The "layman's" catalyst would make the boss more of a dmg sponge with fewer mechanics, so people can just concentrate on their own rotations rather than both the dance of mechanics and dps. And there'd be no boost to loot.
The casual one would decrease the stats of the boss and would decrease the mechanics variety. Obviously would have the lowest drop with maybe even some drops missing.
In order to fully activate any of those 3 versions of the boss, you'll need to use all 40 catalysts of the same type during the fight (that is if we only apply this to raid bosses). If the boss wasn't killed after the usage - the catalysts go back to their users. If the boss was stolen (killed by a non-og-raid people) - same shit.
This way you'd have open world tailored experiences that are also "equalized" in their complexity, while also accounting for the skill lvl of the players. The pvp for/around the boss still remains. The encounter itself can still be repeated, and maybe even in a different version if so desired. The top rarity drops are still mainly farmed by the people who can farm them (the <10%), while the boss itself can be content for more people if they manage to catch its spawn in time.
What's the glaring cons of this suggestion that I'm missing, cause I'm sure there's some.
For me, in my experience, no glaring 'cons' exist. This is the only way I know that this is normally achieved. MMOs just have to jump through more hoops to do the same sort of thing that other games do by changing difficulty or encounter 'type'.
However, Ashes is Open World Contested bosses, so I guess we could count that as one.
Back to the DPS Meter issue though, the only problem I'd see with just making the bosses 'hard to beat due to overwhelming focus' is that the actual thing a DPS meter does (let's use the example of me 'having the Combat Log and then parsing it using literally Excel) is keep track of a flow for you.
If an aspiring group has to attempt the boss 60 times because they 'can't pass the focus check', they may still eventually get lucky. If the 'high focus' group can farm it after 6 attempts, they will move on. Not everyone is a 'winner' in Ashes, so it's unlikely to matter as much.
Steven's choosing between two forms of frustration, and slightly choosing between two 'target groups for that frustration'. It's probably fine either way.
This is true, but you see it from the bad side focusing on "you have to do enough DPS" becoming => "DPS is the main issue"
Lets take one of most famous "hard boss" Arthas 25 HM, was at the biggest spike of wow golden age, and was really a big fight a really challenging one. the NM mode was already a tough fight also.
Did Arthas need an insane DPS around 90%+ of the "perfect" DPS people could bring ? yep. Was it enough to kill boss ? absolutely no, even a raid 25 team with the good raid comp and all people doing their 100% damages could totally wipe and wipe again.
Because this fight has LOT of mechanics, which are hard to deal with, and where the mistake of one is the wipe of all.
And a good way to explain all is taking just a little (really) part of this fight : 2nd val'kyr + defile.
Valkyr : 3 winged lady spawn, grab one random character (out of the 25) and travel with them to the closest border (circle arena with border being empty so you fall). They had many life and you had to burn their life asap. it already asked a little mechanic : have all 3 valkyr getting the same way, so the raid had to gather middle "slightly" on a side (enough to be sure hte 3 valkyr goes the same way, to have them gathered to make this big DPS easy)
Defile : one character is targetted by arthas and a black area spawn under his feet, after 1 second, all people in take damages and the area grow for each people hit. So again, the raid gather at same area, and move at once far from the defile area.
Separate each mechanic are not so hard (even if each can easily be source of death or even for defile a wipe). but at 2nd and 5th time of the fight they appear it becomes really tricky : they spawn nearly together... so you have to be all in middle (where the mistake on defile will be the biggest problem) move as late as possible (to have valkyr have the most travel to do so most time to kill them) BUT as soon as possible to avoid any little tic of defile (most of time it was enough to have a snowball effect and in the end get it in most if not all area)
it was a BIG DPS check, which was hard to do because mechanics were hard to deal with
reduce the life of valkyr (so DPS check) this part become easy.
Now lets take soul's bosses they are mostly 100% around avoid (we can consider "mechanics" due to the design of the games) ok, so you can play safe, wait your time to hit as safely as possible. the fight could last 30 minutes, or more, you still do it. just long, full of pressure.
Now lets take a limit for example of 20 minutes, meaning that each time the boss does a skill that is its best time to hit you HAVE TO go to hit him, the fight gets harder, you can't allow yourself to play perfectly safe.
reduce this limit to 15 minutes, now even skills where hitting will need a hard avoid just after, or a "perfect frame" to be allwo to go to hit the boss... the fight is even harder.
Just because i added a timer limit to a fight, i made it harder.
Combat tracker in WoW or FFXIV (2 MMORPG currently considered with the most challenging PvE) are not so usefull to understand the hardest fight.
I did "high end" on both...
and for FFXIV i even was in a team of people that wanted to build from fresh their own strategy : no one of us watched any kind of small information about bosses before we killed them ourselves... FFXIV is far more around "DPS gate" than wow in my opinion, but what makes us struggle to fight was mostly understand mechanics and find how to deal with... The DPS was always our last problem, and in fact because we all mastered well our class, and due to building step by step strategy... when we manage to see the last part of fight, trying to get the "most damages we could" was clearly not a problem.
The need of DPS forced us to play "as perfect as possible" no more no less. (and we speak about a game were 2/3 if not 3/4 of Global Cooldown of healers are spent in... damages ^^" for healers the difficulty was timing their heal perfectly to soak the high spike of damages while keeping as much DPS as possible)
Now the question I have, are the ff14/wow bosses interesting because they have a proper "culmination" to the battle (especially in ff14's case), with the intensity of the fight growing throughout the fight, or was it just the fact of overcoming the peak difficulty of the boss?
What I'm trying to get at is this: would those bosses still be interesting if their skillset was completely randomized right from the first second of the fight? Or am I wrong and they were already randomized?
To me, it is a well designed boss.
However, this is only true if you consider a boss to be part content, part puzzle.
That said, I agree with your point that we shouldnt need tools outside of the game - this is why the tracker should be built in to the game.
WoW and FF14 bosses are not randomized generally. It's almost impossible to compare them, a boss of the non-random kind is designed (for me personally) more as a spectacle or a speedrun.
I don't find them interesting, so I don't play those games. I believe I can see why others find them interesting (you can see it in Monster Hunter, a sufficiently 'overgeared' player can defeat certain higher level Monsters just by 'playing perfectly' but if you're not overgeared ENOUGH you still have to deal with its 'Rage' and 'Desperation' mechanics, even more perfectly... or you could play with much less stats and have to use tools, terrain, and sometimes teamwork)
I want to play Ashes because I saw (and experienced) the FF11 type bosses within Ashes, and hope for more of those.
To each their own, really?
I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to have a fun boss fight w/o the timer of dps (the rising difficulty is that timer). Or would the hardcore pvers see such a fight cheap and boring (the fight being completely randomized and at peak difficulty right from the start)?
I consider myself hardcore ENOUGH at PvE to be an answer-er here.
I don't need rage mechanics, other people need rage mechanics. Lemme explain.
If the boss does not rage, it's just '100% from moment one', then I have to be 100% from moment One. I have to learn and adapt in timeframes on the order of seconds, and react to things and UNDERSTAND what happened because of my reaction in fractions of seconds, right down to 'individual frames'.
Bring it on.
It's other people who don't enjoy this, it certainly ain't me.
If anything, it's the opposite, because I don't want to have to go through the entire easy first part every time I want to practice the harder second part. It's not there for me. It's there for a different player type.
It's not a DPS meter, it's a Combat Tracker.
A Combat Tracker is a way to 'watch the replay' of a battle, skipping unnecessary parts, and sometimes with more info than a player might have had from their perspective unless they read at significantly above average human speed (Combat Log).
The DPS part of this is often more relevant to me to find out (in FFXI for example) when someone did TOO MUCH DAMAGE, not when they didn't do enough.
Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.
Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.
They were a mix of both types (the only game I know to do so).
Top end content doesnt need DPS checks, but they do need fail conditions. DPS checks are just one option for adding a fail condition to an encounter - there are many other options, and a good game will take advantage of as many of them ad they can.
If I understand correctly, you needed to see that course of events in the fight in the tracker in order to understand boss logic at that moment, right? What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?
Subconscious avoidance of a specific interaction.
I don't need the meter, my teammates do. For them, I AM the meter. Hopefully you know what I mean enough that I don't really need to say it and provoke the potential ire of a certain type of person.
I don't use combat trackers, I just need a combat log that I can access after the fact, because people can't pull references directly out of my brain.
Completely randomly?
Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.
On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.
Other than that, if you kept at least 'chances for Enmity to influence the attack's main target' but otherwise completely random, then yes, you just have 'most of FFXI' at that point, bearing in mind that the boss is limited by TP and cannot 'just spam powerful abilities if no one is attacking it' (given how TP gain works it CAN spam those abilities as soon as about 10 people are attacking it).
Randomization (complete randomization) is where you need a tracker most.
You want to look back at a pull (successful or not) and see why that pull succeeded or failed. What ratio of abilities did the boss use, were there abilities used one after the other that caused specific issues, and if so, is there anything you can do about that next time?
While it is absolutely possible to look this up in your logs, a guild based combat tracker is essentially nothing more than a faster means of looking this up and comparing the logs of those in your guild.
It's when trackers get removed from a guild setting that what some people consider to be issues start to happen.
Trinity and RP is about how the group uses the strengths and weaknesses of each class in the group to defeat encounters.
Random attacks from the boss lessens efficiency of defeating the encounter by making it challenging to anticipate what's coming next. Also makes it challenging to guarantee win conditions.
But, none of that affects the Trinity System or the RP aspect of combat.
DPS Meters and META tactics that result in cookie cutter builds lessen the RP aspect of combat.
I think Azherae meant it as "tank is no longer tanking, because the boss is never tied to the tank and instead just runs around". Some other roles might get diminished too, if the boss' and class design doesn't account for the randomness of the fight. Maybe healer is never needed because the boss does some weak random shit. Maybe archer is useless because he's constantly getting attacked and get utilize his range dps (though it could be argued that archer's kiting role is played at that moment). I'm sure there's a few other possible hole in the trinity system and roleplaying aspect of it that appear once the boss is no longer controllable by the players in any way. The tank is just the most glaring one.
Which is why it's important to not just look at numbers and instead check to see what else an individual is doing for the group.
There is more to being a main tank than just holding aggro. And there is definitely more to playing a Tank/x than just holding aggro.
Ashes encounters are designed with the expectation of 8-person groups that have one of each Primary Archetype, so whatever randomness a boss might have... that's still going to be a part of the design.
I think we know that "completely random" has to be hyperbole. No boss is going to have attacks that are 100% random. I don't even know what that could possibly mean unless we have AI always procedurally generating brand new attacks on the fly.
I don't understand what can be meant by "maybe healer is never needed". A healer is never needed means that no one ever takes damage. And that must mean the group is so over-powered compared to the boss that a combat tracker is irrelevant.
"One of the design elements that we're implementing into our raids is that the raid will not be exactly the same every single time. You're going to have variables that can't necessarily be pre-planned out for. You can pre-plan out for a lot of the raid like how many DPS do you need and healers and support; where the key position and all that kind of stuff; but I think the compelling aspect of Ashes raiding will be the difficulty in achieving this content and having that content change from session to session as well. We want there to be variables that get manifested by you know what type of node got developed elsewhere. Is he going to have acolytes or cultists? What will the acolytes have skills [available] to them? What kit is the boss gonna have? What available skill repertoire will the boss be able to [wield]? ... A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid kind of takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players."
---Steven
Just because you "didn't need a healer" in one run of the raid does not mean you won't need a healer when you return. Also, just because you don't "need" healing does not mean you won't want a Cleric. A Cleric is more than just a healer.
A Ranger/x is more than just ranged DPS. What else is that Ranger doing to aid the group when they aren't doing ranged DPS.
The Trinity System simply informs us that there is a rock-paper-scissors aspect to the strengths and weaknesses designed for each Archetype and that different Archetypes will want to rely on each other in a group to synergize strengths and mitigate weaknesses.
RP should primarily be about the Archetypes and how the Archetypes synergize their abilities with each other to defeat content. Trinity is mostly a meta-textual way of thinking about the underpinnings of combat.
If the group can defeat a boss without the Tank/x ever using aggro, that's OK. It doesn't diminish the Trinity System and it doesn't diminish RP.
If you can find a way to defeat a boss using all Tanks or all Clerics - that is still RP. And it doesn't really "defeat" the Trinity System unless defeating bosses with all Tanks or all Clerics is the rule, rather than the exception.
The trinity system is system whereby the tank stands in front of as many attacks as they can, keeping the target occupied, healers heal said tank, and any others that may take damage, and DPS deal out the damage.
The trinity system isnt some R/P/S system of class design, it is black and white roles within a group.
I'll tell you what has destroyed MMO's over the last 15 years even more than LFG systems, more than cross server content, more than daily quests or log in rewards - special little snowflake players that refuse to fall in line with the trinity system.
Want to make MMO's great again? Have a hard and fast trinity system where there is no room for ambiguity, no blurred lines, no "well, I'm a healer primary, but I've got my DPS bow out and I've taken Bard secondary, so put me in as a tank" people that think they can just be and do what ever and the rest of us need to accept that.
You would. You are in the 'bring it on' category of player. I'll leave it to your personal experience to inform your perspective as to how many others like you there are.
That's usually easy to tell, but the entire reason you do that is so that you know that the issue was random and not with your plan, or you 'realize that you may also need to prepare people for that scenario' because the path through the fight might be so different. We're back to 'Jormungand' again (and I'd just go back to that topic). A 20-30 minute fight where multiple people are properly engaged, as we discussed there, means someone eventually misses something, possibly quite early in. (Even considering what this topic is, I prefer not to derail it, because despite what might currently be under discussion, I truly do 'see the purpose of this thread as giving Noaani a space to discuss with people and advocate for the suggestion given on behalf of me and others', glad to poke at boss design there though).
This is another whole separate topic and I'm sure we could find some post to piggyback that discussion off of that 'no one is using'.
Anyways I have no answer for you, Dygz, that you are likely to 'understand'. Your definitions are not similar to mine. NiKr, I don't personally care about the Trinity system, 'hard tanking', or that type of combat role. TL is purported to be Weapon based, as is Onigiri, as is Elite Dangerous.
I'm not going into a discussion about 'player synergy vs player twitch skills vs player role' again, as it leads to things that my mind labels as contradictions even when I try to understand a certain point of view. I will gladly throw a bunch of data and answers at NiKr if you two want to hash that out, my personal request is that you make a new thread for it or use the 'Character Balance' one on the front page somewhere.
I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.
This is also my conclusion.
The top 10% of players are often led by the top less-than-1% of players, the 'shot-callers' in Raids, the 'Moguls' in Econ, etc. There's whole videos for just WoW about World First raid groups where the shot-caller explicitly doesn't even play in the raid because the amount of things you need to do and track is so 'much' that they are better off not.
From that (and massive discussion on the matter from that scene) we have the implication that content 'at limit' had a situation where the pioneers of it 1) had 30+ people, 2) (presumably) chose the one most observationally-endowed and possibly tactically skilled from their ranks to be in that role, in a game where WeakAuras and similar add-ons are a thing, and then 3) still concluded that it would be better if that person was only watching and commanding.
Because that's what the content required.
Go down one tier. Or two. There is a level at which that person 'can do it while playing', or at which 'they can do it in real time no WeakAuras no Combat Tracker'. If Steven's goal is 'I would like to cap everyone at this point, and make it so that the content is limited to groups with the sort of person who can do this with no external assistance' (let's go so far as to assume that me writing a Combat Log parser was off limits)...
Then he's just chosen his 'single digit percentage' by a different skillset than a game that allows Trackers. And this could easily be a functional goal. It 'creates a winner' by a factor that is a population selection based on something that could probably be outright genetic. But some would say skills are a gene lottery, so that's fine.
If anything, the thing I don't like about it, is that Trackers, particularly in games where there is true challenge, are a good way to spread out those 'skilled players', to allow them to form groups with less tactically skilled players rather than 'causing the friction and toxicity that comes with having no objective data'. I believe the latter can ultimately lead to a situation where all the 'skilled players' congregate together for success over time rather than leading and improving their less-skilled friends and counterparts.
I object to this game design style, despite 'being one of those players' with a group that has literally pushed through all that already, It's the sort of thing a more elitist/toxic version of me would design, which is why I usually doubt that Steven's stance is exactly what is presented as a whole. But either outcome is an accusation, either I'm saying 'this is performative (like YoshiP's stance)' where the 'you can't use Meters' is just a way to appease all the people who think they are bad while doing nothing about it...
Or I'm saying 'Steven is a toxic elitist who, as a leader, prefers a scenario where leaders have additional power and control because others don't have access to tools that can rival their abilities'.
But one can take the third option and take it in good faith, in which case, the response (from me at least) is 'see if someone can convince Steven that this will lead to one of the above and he should change stance'.
And that, I leave to Noaani and any staff Intrepid has who hold similar views, one step at a time.
If a mob had that number of abilities, it would mean that basically all mobs have the same abilities (there aren't all that many actual abilities - it is the combination of abilities that makes things interesting).
If a mobs have the same ability set, you will come across that same killer combination at some point, on another mob.
Keep in mind though, we are now well and truly out of any real world scenario here.
Well, I doubt you will see the same three options I do, but just in case you agreed with anything ELSE I said, which is it for you? Doesn't have to be so discrete.
1) Performative, it's impossible to stop trackers, meaning that the winners will be cheaters OR that they will be constantly having to prove they don't cheat (because there's no way to detect it, and the definition of Combat Tracker is confusing in the case of someone like me who can program parsers)
2) Elitism, where the ideal is that people like me form exclusive groups with others like me when it comes to top end encounter content (this applies regardless of the content type, most analysts of the type I mentioned function across disciplines because again... genetic)
3) You hope that Steven has a more permissive stance on the type of tracker that I can write, or perceive that if I write it myself and don't just download it, I'm still being rewarded for my personal skill and should be allowed to do so as long as I don't distribute it (in which case those punished would be those who don't write them).
4) Insert own.
I can see an interesting world in case #3 where my team could 'register their proprietary tracker with Intrepid so that they know how it works and can just ban OTHER people doing it the same way'.
Victory by Verran Patent Law.
Cheaters gonna cheat.
Elitists will strive to be elitists in any case.
The devs should not provide tools to make that easier for them.
Steven should not have a more permissive stance.
FFXIV are fight where there are close to 0 RNG (wow still more with "who will be targeted" that can be source of big mistake if people are not focused).
Skillset of bosses are for hardest boss (in FFXIV, the "really hard" being ultimate and to a lesser but still hard, the 4th/last of a tier raid) hard to deal with, and really unforgivable. putting a RNG without increasing the time you have to prepare could make it close to impossible.
A perfect example are tank bust, skills that can easily one shot a tank. many doesnt have anykind of cast bar, nothing call them (aside "it is the timer where the boss will do it") so if tanks and healer doesn't know "it is time" the tank will die... The "shield" healer cannot keep non stop its shield on tank (not enough mana for the whole fight and... he still needs to do DPS for enrage) and the tank doesnt have enough CD to have at least one activ any second of fight.
But FFXI showed RNG works well for high end difficulty, and even in recent MMORPG, lost ark recently showed it aswell... it is in fact like arena size, size of raid, game with/without healers (or even tank LA got no real tank)
Those are just elements that never avoid to do hard fight, but change how you can make the fight hard but not impossible. Devs knows their game, and have their own experience of previous fight so all those are never a problem.
Have to understand that when we reach top end, the fight design first have ton consider people able to play their class perfectly, so to give close to 100% of their potential DPS. Then those are people that understand well the game mechanic. Those two element won't vary from boss another because bind to the game. so if you want to do tough and really challenging fight, you HAVE TO include the need to be "close to perfect" in both of those point. This is where many games have "easy fight" because quite permissiv about those 2 base knowledge that allow top players to just faceroll the fight.
Also, there are MANY way to challenge the DPS of the raid... The "hard enrage" is the most common and the easiest to do for devs... but this is the only reason we see it everywhere.
In such situation, people also need ways to improve themselves close to "perfect"
edit : holy trinity (or even ... could see up to 4 roles with support like bard in FFXI being not healer, but really strong addition to group)
This is JUST another criteria of design. bind to the game mechanics
You can do a good MMORPG, with hard and engaging fight, with not this trinity,
Now, Ashes will have this trinity and maybe the 4 side (some people consider cleric will be healer, while bard will buff others but not heal... ) so all design have to push each role and not allow a "finalyl, if we play perfectly, we can avoid to take the cleric"