boss monster with random mechanics / skills

Asgermon

hey
there have been some discussions about boss monsters. I hope I haven't overlooked anything and am writing something here for the second time.
i just wanted to throw a question in the room.

Would you prefer, from a fixed number of options, randomly selected boss monster mechanics / skills / motions for a boss monster or static, always constant mechanics / skills / movements?

by that I don't mean the dynamic adjustment of the boss's difficulty depending on whether you defeated previous boss monsters quickly or slowly. whereby a boss monster with randomly selected mechanics is certainly more difficult than a boss monster with static mechanics. My main concern is whether you like boss monsters with random meachnics / skills / movements better or worse and why.

example:
a boss monster has 3-4 skills that are randomly selected from a list of 20 skills at the beginning of the fight. the times between the activation of the individual skills could also be chosen randomly at the beginning of the fight. In addition, the boss monster's movement patterns could be selected at random from a list of movement patterns. (not we can choose that but the system)

the whole thing must of course be properly balanced. a boss monster that knocks out 4 skills within 4 seconds would be pretty overpowered or too easy to defeat if you can dodge the attacks.

some may ask why you should want something like that. variety and new challenges every time.

what do you think?

bloodprophet

I do like this idea. When they spawn pick 5 from a list of 20 and see what happens.

OnlyOne

If we do have bosses with constant mechanics and skills, I fear the experience of encountering a boss will soon become stale. It would definitely keep me on my toes if bosses would have a skill pool of 20+ skills and randomly choosing 3-5 of those to use. This way I feel it would take more time for me to learn and memorize all of their 20+ skills to effectively fight against them. I would love for bosses to have that skill pool option.

Leiloni

TERA had some bosses that sort of did this. They'd have a defined skill set so you'd learn them and know the tells and how to deal with them, but the order they did the skills in would be completely random, and sometimes certain moves would be repeated. It meant that every time you went in there you had to be as on your toes as the first time you defeated him. It gets tiring after a while because you're putting in so much energy every single time.

Noaani

Intrepid already plan on having some aspects of raid boss mobs be randomized.

Wandering Mist

Asgermon wrote: »

the whole thing must of course be properly balanced. a boss monster that knocks out 4 skills within 4 seconds would be pretty overpowered or too easy to defeat if you can dodge the attacks.

And therein lies the kicker - It's incredibly hard to balance such a system while still making it tuned properly to provide a suitable challenge. There have been WoW bosses in the past that have had random elements like that and it gets to the point where your success on a fight relies entirely on RNG rather than skill. You can do everything perfectly but if the game decides to give you a rubbish set of viables from the boss, you just lose no matter what. It doesn't feel good, especially if you are competing for server firsts, etc.

Adaegus Wintermight

Now this is something I'd like to see! I've only seen something remotely similar to it in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj raid from World of Warcraft. The Anubisath Defenders.

In short, they are really tanky trash mobs that have 2 of 4 dangerous abilities paired with random magical reflection shields and the ability to spawn adds.

For example your first one could have Shadowbolt Volley (which causes raid wide heavy damage to those who are farther away than 15 yards from the creature) and Meteor (which targets a random player in the raid and hurls a meteor at it, splitting damage between all raid member standing near the victim).

The very next mob could have two completely seperate abilities and reflect different types of magic. It makes for a pretty vide variation in possible mechanics and because of that different strategies will be required for each one. They're some of my favorite "trash" mobs in any MMO I've ever played because they're fun, engaging, and they never get old.