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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.
What Intrepid are doing right with Boss fights feedback (Poison dragon example)
truelyyy
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
For the last hour or so I have been soloing the poison dragon and o'boy was I having fun. I was playing cleric with a staff and on purposely going melee range fighting when I could.
Some of the reasons why I was having so much fun:
- Most MMORPGs have a set of sequences the boss fights go through with no variability, therefore people can over time completely know the fight from memory meaning the player does not need to react to the boss (fun) and can just go through the motions of knowing what to do at each point from memory (more robotic gameplay). The variability comes from at certain points in the fight the dragon may pick at RnG chance one of 3 different mechanics to play out. Not only that but I also believe when these mechanics play out they can also play out differently, for example the dragon releases wave that you need to jump over, I believe there is RnG between some numbers e.g. 4-7 of the numbers of waves that get released, also sometimes the dragons flies around to do these waves and other times he'll release multiple waves in the same spot.
- I could be wrong but I think loot tables are tied to DPS checks somehow. I think anyone that has soloed the ice or poison dragon has never had the Tome drop however they have dropped in group that have taken down these bosses. I like rewarding in this way.
- The poison dragon now has a poison attack which if it hits you directly you instantly die. This is part of what made this fight super intense for me. To avoid this, I would have to mount up in time to dodge the shots otherwise I was dead. If you time it right you can also dodge one of the shots but it can be tricky/unreliable. This dragon just as the other world boss dragons has great audio feedback as well as visual feedback. The dragon has different sounds for different kind of mechanics that are about to go down, so when I hear that dragon sound associated fear strikes my heart! I can also confirm the mechanic with the visual feedback.Then I'd have to mount up in time and run around or i'm dead, have to be quick. Sometimes I maybe inside a long healing cast animation and I would have to use dodge to animation cancel so I could mount up in time to avoid the shots. This was a lot of fun.
- The fight gets harder as you progress. At certain HP% the bosses speed up their mechanics making the fight harder, this is great because at the start you are getting into it and as the fight goes on and you really get into it because more intense, this is a great way of doing it.
- The thing I think can be improved is the damage of certain other mechanics, i.e. the one shot is great but the other damage needs to be upped. The dragons are meant to be for level 15s and it's same to assume they will have good armour, such as the quest epic gear avilable therefore the damage output of mechanics should reflect that. For example when I'm getting hit by the wave it does about 300 damage of my 1600hp pool so i think that damage for example should be roughly increased by 60%. I think this goes a lot for ice dragon as well as it's only 1 shot kind of mechanic is when you get surrounded by all the ice blocks. However the other mechanics should probably hurt a bit more, I think they hurt me for about 300-400 damage ish. If you are failing multiple of those mechanics you should be dying really so upping the damage here by around 30%. Also if people are doing these dragons in group they can be ressed/run back so I feel these mechanics can be a bit tough.
Some of the reasons why I was having so much fun:
- Most MMORPGs have a set of sequences the boss fights go through with no variability, therefore people can over time completely know the fight from memory meaning the player does not need to react to the boss (fun) and can just go through the motions of knowing what to do at each point from memory (more robotic gameplay). The variability comes from at certain points in the fight the dragon may pick at RnG chance one of 3 different mechanics to play out. Not only that but I also believe when these mechanics play out they can also play out differently, for example the dragon releases wave that you need to jump over, I believe there is RnG between some numbers e.g. 4-7 of the numbers of waves that get released, also sometimes the dragons flies around to do these waves and other times he'll release multiple waves in the same spot.
- I could be wrong but I think loot tables are tied to DPS checks somehow. I think anyone that has soloed the ice or poison dragon has never had the Tome drop however they have dropped in group that have taken down these bosses. I like rewarding in this way.
- The poison dragon now has a poison attack which if it hits you directly you instantly die. This is part of what made this fight super intense for me. To avoid this, I would have to mount up in time to dodge the shots otherwise I was dead. If you time it right you can also dodge one of the shots but it can be tricky/unreliable. This dragon just as the other world boss dragons has great audio feedback as well as visual feedback. The dragon has different sounds for different kind of mechanics that are about to go down, so when I hear that dragon sound associated fear strikes my heart! I can also confirm the mechanic with the visual feedback.Then I'd have to mount up in time and run around or i'm dead, have to be quick. Sometimes I maybe inside a long healing cast animation and I would have to use dodge to animation cancel so I could mount up in time to avoid the shots. This was a lot of fun.
- The fight gets harder as you progress. At certain HP% the bosses speed up their mechanics making the fight harder, this is great because at the start you are getting into it and as the fight goes on and you really get into it because more intense, this is a great way of doing it.
- The thing I think can be improved is the damage of certain other mechanics, i.e. the one shot is great but the other damage needs to be upped. The dragons are meant to be for level 15s and it's same to assume they will have good armour, such as the quest epic gear avilable therefore the damage output of mechanics should reflect that. For example when I'm getting hit by the wave it does about 300 damage of my 1600hp pool so i think that damage for example should be roughly increased by 60%. I think this goes a lot for ice dragon as well as it's only 1 shot kind of mechanic is when you get surrounded by all the ice blocks. However the other mechanics should probably hurt a bit more, I think they hurt me for about 300-400 damage ish. If you are failing multiple of those mechanics you should be dying really so upping the damage here by around 30%. Also if people are doing these dragons in group they can be ressed/run back so I feel these mechanics can be a bit tough.
1
Comments
I think the roll CD is perfect. Having played GW2 where the roll is about twice as many CD wise it's a bit too much emphasise on dodge rolling. Also stamina bars for sprinting, rolling etc will be put in the UI later they have said. Yea having to move around rather than the tank standing in one place is another good point as to why it was fun!
I did like the poison dragon a lot, only thing I didn't like was that it went into a loop flying over 3 specific areas. made having a tank kinda useless sense it was flying around on a script and probably hurt the Melee DPS sense they would have to chase the dragon around the whole fight
but I definitely would like to see more dodging mechanics in the over world environment. everything fun in FFXIV is locked behind instances
You might take the initial hit of the drop, (200 damage) but you wont take a poison tick and die from it.
I could almost solo it as a mage using mount heal except for the dragon would sometimes stun me during its flying phase, and then land on top of me for damage and then finally killing me with the poison jump mechanic aoe before the stun would run out, I didnt figure out a way to get around that before servers went down.
That doesn't work at melee range. When I was getting some bugs when the dragon was on top of me slamming me I mounted up and it reduced the incoming damage, maybe that could have helped probably not though.