What Intrepid are doing right with Boss fights feedback (Poison dragon example)

truelyyy

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.

HappyGoLucky

I very much appreciate the fact that you can't just run out of the way of abilities (like the purple puddles the poison dragon puts down). You actually need to roll, or use blink, to get out the way. I haven't played a lot of MMO's, but the ones I have, you can pretty much just stand in one spot the entire boss battle. The poison dragon was definitely a choice example. Kinda on topic/off topic. How do you guys feel about the roll cool down? I think it's way to long. I'd rather see a third bar for stamina, for roll, sprint, and block. I've heard they might use the magic bar for sprint, seems kinda silly. What would be the advantages of using the magic bar over a stamina bar? Maybe I should start a different tread, sorry.

truelyyy

Nightman wrote: »

I very much appreciate the fact that you can't just run out of the way of abilities (like the purple puddles the poison dragon puts down). You actually need to roll, or use blink, to get out the way. I haven't played a lot of MMO's, but the ones I have, you can pretty much just stand in one spot the entire boss battle. The poison dragon was definitely a choice example. Kinda on topic/off topic. How do you guys feel about the roll cool down? I think it's way to long. I'd rather see a third bar for stamina, for roll, sprint, and block. I've heard they might use the magic bar for sprint, seems kinda silly. What would be the advantages of using the magic bar over a stamina bar? Maybe I should start a different tread, sorry.

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!

Apok

I've played quite a bit of FFXIV, honestly as an MMO the mechanics of dodging and running around are what make's that game so great (I skip all the cutscenes and don't play around with much of the side stuff) it's mostly about the fun boss battles.

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

Ruerik

On the poison dragon, you could get away without dodging, ocne you see it starting to charge its poison spit just stop attacking and start running around (attacking lowers your movement speed)

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.

truelyyy

Taerrik wrote: »

On the poison dragon, you could get away without dodging, ocne you see it starting to charge its poison spit just stop attacking and start running around (attacking lowers your movement speed)

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.