I really disliked the fact that full weapons dropped, not materials to make said weapons. Also to make lower tier bosses relevant throughout the game, maybe they could drop Jewelry or something of this field that would be the best slot items even for the end-game players? Similar to Lineage II lower grade raid bosses dropping best rings? This ensures that items are super valuable and raid boss itself is super profitable to kill even for lower level players, everyone with too high of LVL will have to get it from market. A positive loop.
I agree with this. I would rather the world bosses drop jewellry too. Jewellry can last a long time and can be very valuable.
Also to make lower tier bosses relevant throughout the game, maybe they could drop Jewelry or something of this field that would be the best slot items even for the end-game players? Similar to Lineage II lower grade raid bosses dropping best rings? This ensures that items are super valuable and raid boss itself is super profitable to kill even for lower level players, everyone with too high of LVL will have to get it from market. A positive loop.
Have you ever played Lineage II before? End-game players are capable of preparing the alts with the best gear and "lower level players" cannot compete against them (unless they are zerging to make it economically irrelevant). To me, it's fine, but it seems more convenient to split end-game players from newbies.
Things looked quite good, especially considering this is for Alpha 2.
The mechanics were good for a low level boss and seems like a decent introduction to raid encounters for now players.
The interaction with the world (knocking down trees) is a nice touch and the encounter's play on his weapon is pretty cool and thematic.
The visuals didn't seem too over the top, which is good - you need to be able to tell what's going on especially when players have to rely on boss telegraphs to know what to do.
You probably aren't there just yet, but some things I would like to see in a future boss demo is:
How raid composition plays into fights (e.g. a boss has multiple mechanics where each mechanic needs involvement from classes with certain capabilities - e.g. different forms of CC for adds, maybe a NPC or targeted player that has to be kept alive during a phase so somewhat of a healer check, etc.)
How node level, weather and/or climate, and maybe some other dynamics impact the encounter
How number of people participating in the fight changes things (e.g. maybe you bring too many people to try and zerg down a boss and he calls for help to equalize things)
etc.
Basically interested in how different factors mix things up to keep the fights interesting and players engaged to have to react to differences from a previous time they did the encounter
Overall... super happy. Seeing both intentional and unintentional actions give the boss more character. Seeing that there are some tactics to consider while also taking into account the abilities of the raid group is a smart move. Hopefully that keeps the boss from being farmed ( ). If this is in open world and pvp is part of it... the release is going to be interesting for a few months. I would suggest some way to limit pvp only as it could be a deal breaker with some folks who become targets by large or chaotic clans. Please don't spam me crap about it being a pvp game... I've been a part of L2 and other MMOs as a tester and onward, I've watched servers lose accounts/subscriptions when access is controlled beyond the rest of the server population's ability to fight back. I personally enjoy friction... just wanted to throw the farmers perspective into the mix. Maybe a week or two where low level bosses are peace zones except for clans that are at war.
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
- Overall I enjoyed the world boss showcase. Like you guys have stated this is the first world boss players encounter when they start in the Riverlands. So his mechanics were simple for the common player but maybe new to newer players and I like that. As you said it is an introduction to the world boss raiding and it should be rather simple! Tanks have to look out for the big smash and be quick to block it, healers/supporters have to keep an eye on the healthbars and keep them topped up bevor the shockwave comes and dds need to be aware and change targets boss - tree totem - adds and watch their positioning so they dont get collateral smashed by his attacks and go all out with dmg in phase 3 but dont bring the boss to phase 3 when the tree totem from phase 2 is still standing.
- Multi-group gameplay is always welcome for me and necessary in a mmorpg
- Also necessary are boss phases, imo every boss mob should have at least 2 phases. It just brings surprises when you encounter them the first time and it is just more enjoyable to have variety for mechanics and also maybe some storytelling to the different phases, for example FromSoftware does it really well in their games: Darksouls series, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring.
- Also for some more mechanic feedback: maybe give the Cyclops some grab mechanics to throw players/objects around and some kicks to use the players as a ball . I saw these ideas in other comments and I also liked them.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
- The Fel Reaver from wow tbc is one of my favorite encounters, maybe not from the fight itself but just from it´s precence. Just his menacing sounds and stomping while getting closer to you was so scary back in the day and from the distance you just see this giant thing and you have never seen anthing like it before in the game. I think most world bosses should be really intimidating so your first reaction is like "what the hell" and back off a few steps. There should be a reason for them to be called a word boss. But that said it would be interessting to have world bosses that are actively hidden, using camouflage similar to reallife animals basically melting themself into the scenery. These world bosses linger around waiting for stray players and attacking them when they least expect it, coming out of the ground or pouncing at them or falling from the ceiling of a cave on their pray.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
- My biggest concern would be high lvl player taking part in these lower lvl fights. Would have been nice to get your thoughts on this topic. Do their lvls and dmg get scaled down while near the world boss or are they completely hinderd from partaking in the fight? If there are no counter measures against higher lvled players interfering or taking part in these fights, the fights will get too easy and irrelevant or groups in the actual lvl range will just get bullied away. I personally really dislike it when higher players make low lvl content irrelevant for other players or hinder them taking part in it. It´s nice to have help sometimes from higher players but it should not make the content a joke.
Anyways thanks for this months update and I am so exited to see what you guys have in store in the upcoming updates! Keep up your awesome work!
I agree here. There should be varying levels of difficulty. While many people in the forums might fashion themselves to be raid gods and goddesses the majority of players won't be.
I shoulda used this word before here, but I think that we should add "complexity" as a valuable term for these kinds of discussions. Difficulty is too broad and vague.
I'd rather have a slightly more complex boss than a "difficult one". Difficulty usually comes from incoming dmg and pace of the fight. If the fight is fast-paced and the damage per hit is high - the fight is really difficult. It can be super simple in terms of complexity of the combat and actions though.
[...]
What would, imo, be a better boss is something that has you do a few more different actions, but has slower pace and/or lower dmg. So the fight might not be as frantic and thrilling (though these were debatable during the showcase), but it'd be fun and interesting. And it would also show newcomers what they might expect later on in the game, when Intrepid would in fact speed up the pace and ramp up the damage, while keeping (or even adding) mechanic complexity.
And I think Azherae's post showed several nice mechanics that wouldn't really overwhelm players, as long as the boss itself wasn't killing them in 1.5 aoes.
Hate to extend this discussion to infinity, but I disagree pretty harshly. I actually hate when the complexity is high but the stakes are low. It teaches players to be careless and only play around specific major mechanics, instead of staying aware of the complete bigger picture. ESO does this in pretty much all of its content that isn't the highest tier competitive PvE achievement/highscore stuff, and its what turns the game into a mindless daily grind.
I'd much rather have low-stakes bosses being low complexity with big impact if you mess up (or have a bad build and don't fulfill your role in the party, etc.), and then increase the complexityas the content gets to higher tiers, while keeping the health & punishment damage consistent.
The boss looks great as an introductory worldboss. Ive seen some people say the boss isnt hard enough, but I assume this isnt meant to be that hard.
I spotted that in the third phase, each time he does his groundfirst aoe stomp, the number of stomps increases by 1. This i think is a nice way of doing the enrage. When players push the boss to P3, they are on a timeframe to kill him or his AOE stomps will wipe the raid. I saw a lot of people say that the boss was too easy, but this time pressure + the threat of pvp happening during the fight, taking away from your dps, makes this a very good first challenge in my oppinion.
I also really liked the multiple POVs during the stream, i think this is something you guys should keep doing for showcases where multiple classes are in play. I think it would be better if you guys showcase each POV a little longer at a time though, in this stream it felt like the swaps were happening a bit too fast at times, but im sure with time you guys will improve on this.
The only thing i didnt really like were the healing vfx. In my oppinion they are still very over the top. The screen tears and bright flashing all over the screen just doesnt look good to me.
Overall really happy with what was shown, im exited to see more.
Keep up the great work!
0
Options
akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Watching again,
Would prefer the dead raid boss could be walked and jumped on, not walked through (current)
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
I loved the combat preview, the spell FX were extremely visually pleasing, notably with the level of particle FX present. If that amount of VFX was the end result placed into the game at launch, that would be excellent. The mechanics were interesting, I loved the swapping POVs with the healers and mages, it looked extremely engaging, fun, and definitely requiring your attention, I loved it. The boss phases were also excellent, notably so for a lower level world raid boss, and they were clear and distinct between phases. Every boss should have phases, and if not phases, then adds brought in with their own mechanics to vary the playing field and how the raid fights the boss/adds in order to shift the method of combat.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
N/A
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
I’m extremely excited with the unique mechanics I saw in the cyclops preview. Planting the tree down and having to DPS the tree and fungal spores to prevent healing (or allow the spores to heal team members at the cost of potentially healing the boss), was extremely unique and very interesting to see, I’m excited to see what mechanics the team builds off of this. I think more interaction and relevancy from the additional mobs would have been interesting to see, the spirit wolves, as it didn’t seem like they did much, but to be frank, not every boss fight needs to have adds. With the interesting mechanics and boss phases that were implemented, the introduction of adds wasn’t necessary (always appreciated, but not always necessary when the boss is extremely engaging in its own. I would wager this varies on a boss by boss basis.)
We’d like your feedback on the Alpha Two Cyclops Combat Preview shown during the May 2023 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
Please don’t feel limited by the thought starters above. Feel free to share anything you’d like about Ashes of Creation’s Cyclops Combat Preview shown during the May Development Update
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, June 16 2023, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
For an alpha state, it looked pretty good, but it need a loooooot of polish. Mechanics were simple and straightforward even if I would like more clarity in the way they are conveyed to the player. The relative “easiness” of the fight kinda washed off the sense of danger and excitement that a “World Boss” fight need to convey. The music was missing too, and the backstory experienced by the player to truly enjoy it. Other than that, yeah it was cool. Particularly liked the different behaviors of the spiders I hope to see more of that in the release.
Effects were nice, specially the Wind Blow. Everything was readable, except the purposes of the Wolves at the end. The shrooms could be a little more visible too.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
To be honest there is not a lot of world bosses that gave me that of an impression. The hard part of making a world boss memorable it’s the setting and how you access it in the world, often in other MMO they are just at a spot you can easily access and are that different of a raid boss where you need to overcome challenges to have the right to face it. If facing this world boss is meaningful, if I have to overcome hardships to access it, then it will be rewarding.
I feel like Guild Wars 2 with progressive events are the best at that. The dragon in the last expansion is a long event with phase leading to a final fight, like an open world raid. I liked that.
ESO is pretty good at Arena World boss with interesting mechanics too.
It's the journey to the WB that is important, not so much the baddass boss at the end for me. But heh, badass is always good too.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
The winter setting was a good choice for clarity of vision and not disturb the focus of the showcase, but the “Arena” need a lot of polish in this season.
Love the fact that it is a wandering boss who interact with the world. More please.
I am concerned about the fine tuning of the world boss and it’s real difficulty when all the characters and class will have their powers etc even if it’s an “Early” world boss.
Overall I think you are on the good way, this is a good starting point for an alpha point of view.
As always my critics come from love of the project and the goal is just to help you make the best game you can at release and forward.
It would be realy cool if he had a mechanic to pick up a random player and eat him, no resurection possible since there is no corpse left. only way to beat this is to stun him 3 times within a few seconds after he picks up the player.
Also it should def hurt if he steps on you, even if it isn't an attack.
For a low lvl world boss it looks great, even the fact that this game has low lvl raid/world bosses is great. Realy a cut above the rest
the beginning of wisdom is to know you know nothing
It was nice seeing more than 3 or 4 players doing content. The mechanics did not seem to complicated, which is good. I think the struggle was creating enough mechanics without the need or desire of add ons to complete said mechanics. The issue is people have played mmo's for so long and they expect perfection early on or bosses with a plethora of mechanics. They do not desire simplicity anymore.
I hope intrepid simply goes up in difficulty for bosses based off level. Keep the lower level bosses simple as far as mechanics and then create more challenging foes for the higher levels. This allows new players who have not played mmo's for years to learn and grow as a player. Yes some may feel bored... but they are going to no life grind to the higher content anyways.
Please just keep mechanics fun and thought out... and it not turn into a... hey lets just add a bunch of health to make it more difficult. Mechanics over adding of health makes for a more pleasant experience imo. But again do not go over the top, to where a new player has no idea what is going on.
So. On May 18th I started mulling over a question within a thread presented by @akabear "what are elements that make a game keep players invested / staying in a game for the long term?". I drew the conclusion that there are three pillars, with Combat being No. 1. And so the cyclops stream was highly anticipated for me, some would say pivotal. The following post contains exerpts from a "TheoryRaid" thread by @Azherae
Unfortunately, I have been left disheartened after this months livestream. The scale of Tumok, the mechanics, the damage profiles, the visuals. It just left me feeling so underwhelmed and I think a lot of this has to do with where I thought the combat direction would go rather than where it is now.
For some context on why I feel this way and what I would like to see done about it, I'll preface it with the following:
After watching the ranger, cleric, tank & mage previews. I have been left stumped, for the first time I feel like Ashes may not be the MMO for me. And as the community is so quick to remind people of, this is okay. I’m not angry, I’m not disappointed. I’m confused more than anything. I have been invested in this games development, for years. I research topics on the wiki when I’m curious about different aspects of the game, but one aspect of the game that I chalked up as going to be ground-breaking was it’s hybrid combat. It’s one of the things that drew me to the game in the first place when I first saw A Mages Life. Is it a case now that the action element of AOC's "hybrid" combat has been abandoned & it's nothing more than a novelty camera view? If I'm not mistaken, this encounter is over half way through the levelling experience and yet it did not appear to include any mechanics that involve "action-based skills". Within Azherae's post I went into a few mechanics that could have been implemented using "Weak Points" such as Tumok's eye or legs that when hit with "aimed" attacks could stun him during animation wind ups, an example below:
"GRAB'EM" (Aimed Attack)
Tumok reaches down and picks up a random player, winding up to throw them a significant distance from him into the air, resulting in an almost guaranteed death. During his wind up animation the group have to focus fire on his eye, utilising "skill shot" abilities to stun him for 5 seconds, causing him to drop the player and make him vulnerable to 10% increased damage for the duration of the stun. Tumok will then cover his eye with his free hand for a certain amount of time, rendering this stun useless, so use it wisely!
See Hinox Fight for a similar mechanic refence, you can also shoot them in the legs to stun them:
Shadow of the Colossus - Gaius for the sense of scale I was expecting from the Cyclops as a world boss. Due to the sheer size of him, his attacks are extremely telegraphed but hugely destructive. You also feel like you are fighting this insurmountable opponent but once it's down there's an epic death animation equally as destructive as it's attacks making it feel like a HUGE achievement. I think because Tumok was shorter than the surrounding trees his scale seemed to be too small. Gaius's legs were the same height as Tumok.
With the above being said. I had not anticipated that an encounter at 30 out of 50 levels would lean so heavily into tab targeting with there being no emphasis on the “hybrid” aspect of the combat, seemingly in any of the previews, not even a snippet of an ability. The fact that the ranger could free fire using the action camera gave me so much hope for the next ranged abilities we would see. Alas, there were none from the "Action" side in these further previews. I believe that this is significantly effecting what "could be" in terms of combat for bosses like the Cyclops, if the PVE enemies in AOC had "Weak Points" in theme with their overall design that are targeted by action abilities this opens up a completely unique type of combat encounter where action combat favoured players are desirable aswell as tab target favoured players.
As for the current Cyclops battle I have broken this down into some key points I feel like "make" a boss encounter from a PvE perspective and are ofcourse subjective:
Overall Difficulty: 3/10
Explanation: For a boss that is over half way through the levelling experience I would have hoped that it would of been a minimum of 5/10. By this point, elite mobs should have challenged players enough in grouped / solo content with mini mechanics to be ready for a challenge of higher magnitude such as Tumok.
Skill Expression: 2/10
Explanation: Did players have to dodge incoming mechanics or think ahead about their positioning because of damage profiles? Did players have to use specific abilities in order to get them through the fight? I'll make reference to Azherae's thread on "TheoryRaid" again.
Player Engagement: 2/10
Explanation: Did mechanics involve the player having to engage in movement or interaction with objects in order to progress the fight? Boss fights usually have hurdles and there were hurdles in killing Tumok, but they were copy and pasted. "Tab target this, kill it as quick as you can upon spawn." Difficulty and player engagement are not mutually exclusive. You can have swathes of interactive mechanics throughout the fight without exponentially increasing difficulty.
Immersion: 3/10
Explanation: Tumok's fight was severely underwhelming from an immersion point of view, he was considerably smaller than some of the surrounding trees making him seem less immense. For the scale of Verra I was expecting him to tower over trees, knocking them down with his legs with ease, like walking through grass. His scale in turn effects his animations which in turn effects his mechanics. I believe he is currently the size of an elite mob and should be scaled up considerably to be a world boss threat, one where people have to really think about engaging him aswell as people engaging in pvp as they too could get killed due to the sheer scale and destruction Tumok could dish out to both groups. Getting a raid together to kill a cyclops should not be the only criteria, I want to feel nervous regardless of how many people I bring. I want people to think twice about attacking a raid whilst killing Tumok because he could quite easily wipe their raid with a well positioned charge, further reinforcing the Risk v Reward goal of AOC.
Risk v Reward: 2/10
Explanation: What is currently driving players to want to kill Tumok? Better yet, what is the driving factor in another raid wanting to stop a raid from killing Tumok? Does he give everyone a buff to XP gains for the next 24 hours? Does he drop a sword that is better than anything else you'll get in the next 20 levels? Does he drop extremely rare materials? No insight was really given on this other than some weapons dropping, which for a level 30 boss could very well be not worth the risk. Because of corruption, would a level 50 raid not be able to stop the level 30 raid from killing him or would they be locked in the same high level nodes because it's pointless in travelling out of the high level nodes for this kind of reason?
I don't want this post to come across as a bash, because it's not intended to be so. I just honestly believe these raid boss level encounters can be so much more in AOC than what was displayed and with a little bit of verbal insight during these kinds of streams we could be given some information that would resolve much of these concerns.
My biggest concern is if we move into Alpha 2 without a long portion of player testing that is under NDA in order to gather feedback on combat and encounters prior to it being opened up to the general public. Their criticisms will be far harsher than those who are as invested as us on the forums.
I noticed at the very end of the raid, the corpse of the raid boss disappears after it is looted. Five seconds after the loot roll completes, just poof! gone. I don't even know what to think of it. One moment it's there, the next it's as if it never existed. It's not even anti-climactic—that would be something at least. This is just strange. Strange to think that a unique, important, and rare open-world raid boss wouldn't also leave its corpse behind for longer than five seconds.
What if the corpse of a raid boss stayed around for some time longer? Maybe hours after? or days, even? What if the corpse of a raid boss went through stages of decay for a number of real-time days that indicates the passing of time since it was taken down? Say an open-world raid boss had a 6-day respawn timer and after it died there lay a fresh corpse of the mob where it was fought. This would be a sign that it has been less than 24 hours since it was killed. Later at the same sight, one finds some decayed flesh and bones. This would be a sign it's been about 2-3 days since it was taken down. Then somewhere around days 4 and 5 one can see major decay with just bones covered in sediment from nature over time. Players notice this and know it's almost time for the raid boss to respawn.
I think it would be cool to reckon the passing of time based on the states of a defeated raid mob's body. This could be done with any non-instanced raid mob. And I think it would be especially cool to see for a giant mob like a dragon. (Does a dragon corporeally disassemble? or does it have some magical property where it turns to stone and crumbles?)
And finally: Just don't despawn an instanced raid mob's defeated corpse after looting. Let it simply be there until everyone leaves the instance.
I noticed at the very end of the raid, the corpse of the raid boss disappears after it is looted. Five seconds after the loot roll completes, just poof! gone. I don't even know what to think of it. One moment it's there, the next it's as if it never existed. It's not even anti-climactic—that would be something at least. This is just strange. Strange to think that a unique, important, and rare open-world raid boss wouldn't also leave its corpse behind for longer than five seconds.
Its part of the lore, when something dies it becomes ash again, and when it respawnes it comes back from the ashes of creation
@ELRYNOObviously the balancing part of the development proces hasn't been done yet, this showcase is meant to show the overal mechs and feel of this boss. This is NOT a finished product yet
@ELRYNOThis is an MMO not call of duty, you have lots of skills and in action combat it is very difficult to utilize more than 5 or 6 skills at a time because of the need to assign hotkeys for all of them, in tab target you don't have this problem but it makes the gameplay slower and less action packed. Personaly i don't see a way to get all the benefits of both and non of the downsides. Having the option to choose between action camera and tab and to customise your UI to get things the way the way that works best for you is as good as we can hope for
REAL action camera the way it is in shooters like call of duty is impossible in an MMO, you will always need things like aim assist
the beginning of wisdom is to know you know nothing
I noticed at the very end of the raid, the corpse of the raid boss disappears after it is looted. Five seconds after the loot roll completes, just poof! gone. I don't even know what to think of it. One moment it's there, the next it's as if it never existed. It's not even anti-climactic—that would be something at least. This is just strange. Strange to think that a unique, important, and rare open-world raid boss wouldn't also leave its corpse behind for longer than five seconds.
Its part of the lore, when something dies it becomes ash again, and when it respawnes it comes back from the ashes of creation
@ELRYNOObviously the balancing part of the development proces hasn't been done yet, this showcase is meant to show the overal mechs and feel of this boss. This is NOT a finished product yet
I'm not really looking for feedback on my own feedback from other members of the community, my feedback is for Intrepid.
Partially because of this reason.
I understand it's in development, which is why I am giving my feedback on their current iteration of boss development, which I believe to be below par if it stays it's current course. Your opinion on my opinion has no bearing on the validity of my opinion. If your opinion is that my feedback at this moment in time is worthless, then we may aswell all never log in to this forum again until the game releases. Unless of course it is your belief that "positive" feedback at this point in development is the only worthwhile feedback, in which case I again suggest we all reframe from logging in and posting until release to avoid an echo chamber of delusion. If what you say is correct and that this showcase was meant to display the overall mechanics and feel of this boss then my opinions on the overall mechanics and feel of this boss still stand.
1. Big boss = sad melees who can't enjoy the view because their screen is captured by one giant toe (or they are forced to up their camera into the sky and ignore problems on the ground).
2. Big boss + action combat = sad melees who can't interact with bunch of the "weak points" (except "hit second toe an then hit the third one" which is kinda sad).
3. About level and difficulty: "This cyclops is one of the first raids players will experience in the Riverlands and is intended as a lower level introduction to raiding in Ashes." - Steven's comment.
1. Big boss = sad melees who can't enjoy the view because their screen is captured by one giant toe (or they are forced to up their camera into the sky and ignore problems on the ground).
2. Big boss + action combat = sad melees who can't interact with bunch of the "weak points" (except "hit second toe an then hit the third one" which is kinda sad).
3. About level and difficulty: "This cyclops is one of the first raids players will experience in the Riverlands and is intended as a lower level introduction to raiding in Ashes." - Steven's comment.
1. Current Fight = sad melees who cant enjoy the view because their screen is captured by one giant leg. (they are currently forced to up their camera into the sky and ignore problems on the ground to see the upper portion of Tumok) I fail to see why making Tumok any bigger would make this an issue as it is already an issue? Case and point below:
If anything, by making him larger and having his attacks more impactful due to his size melee players will be more inclined to look at him. So...
2. Current Fight = sad melees who are pressing 1,2,3 in that order whilst staring at his leg. If he winds up to charge and a weak point is exposed, I.E his right leg. They will be incentivised to move to his right leg from his left leg and focus that, therefore being incentivised to look at him...So...
3. I understand it's in development, which is why I am giving my feedback on their current iteration of boss development, which I believe to be below par if it stays it's current course. Your opinion on my opinion has no bearing on the validity of my opinion. If your opinion is that my feedback at this moment in time is worthless, then we may aswell all never log in to this forum again until the game releases. Unless of course it is your belief that "positive" feedback at this point in development is the only worthwhile feedback, in which case I again suggest we all reframe from logging in and posting until release to avoid an echo chamber of delusion. If what you say is correct and that this showcase was meant to display the overall mechanics and feel of this boss then my opinions on the overall mechanics and feel of this boss still stand. As stated in my previous comment.
"Player Engagement: 2/10
Explanation: Did mechanics involve the player having to engage in movement or interaction with objects in order to progress the fight? Boss fights usually have hurdles and there were hurdles in killing Tumok, but they were copy and pasted. "Tab target this, kill it as quick as you can upon spawn." Difficulty and player engagement are not mutually exclusive. You can have swathes of interactive mechanics throughout the fight without exponentially increasing difficulty."
Again, I'm not really looking for feedback on my feedback. But I appreciate the ammo for my previous points.
I like to put in a few good things and a few bad things when giving feedback.
- Visually the boss looks cool and the effects from his attacks look cool.
- For a lower level world boss the mechanics were good and interesting.
- Big fan of multi phased bosses so the rage mode was a happy surprise.
- Combat looked boring yet less chaotic, most likely due to the tuning of particle effects.
- Abilities seem to take over the majority of the time spent in combat, Like to see more Basic Attacks, Dodging, Blocking, and Movement(within reason) for the majority of time in combat. Abilities should be strong and enhance combat rather than all the combat has to offer.
16 abilities on Steven’s bar seems like too much. I would rather have to choose 7 abilities when choosing from 20 than choose 16 abilities out of 20 or 30. Less abilities mean smarter choices and more carefully thought out builds. More abilities actually leads to less choice sense you end up taking them all or all the good ones anyways.
Suggestions
- Keep expanding off of this boss fight. You guys are headed in the right direction with that.
- Fewer Abilities, like 5 base slots given to you and then 5 extended slots for abilities with a cool down penalty for each one used increasing linearly. Example: Say I have Fire Bolt, FireBall, Fire Shield, Ice Shard, and Ice Storm as my core 5 abilities and I wanted to have Teleport as well I then can use an extended Slot to gain that ability but now all of my abilities cool downs are increased by like 20% so my fireball spell with a cool down of 20 secs is now 24 secs.
- Make combat more dynamic with Blocking, Dodging, Movement, and weapon(basic attacks) skill trees. Give us the choice to play how we want in combat let us spec into a tanky monster with a bunch of specs into blocking with the expense of being able to move or dodge as well as others. Or let us become a more mobile player but with very bad blocking and defense so it turns into high risk high reward. There are plenty of ways to do this for both tab target and action combat.
Please let us see a 1on1 or group vs group pvp showcase. This game is PVX but since the combat updates after alpha 1, to my knowledge we have not seen any pvp only pve
To be honest, when i saw the livestream i was at first disapointed. The quality of the feed during the livestream was of mediocre quality, that not only made some parts hard to see, but also didn't do justice to the game. My major feedback for showcase improvement is to find a way to improve the quality duringthe livestream.
Luckily 4k versions are uploaded quite fast, and after rewatching them a few times i am, rather pleased with the showcase. The Cyclopse boss, seems inspired by the Fel Reaver of WoW TBC, a mob that i both love and hate. Likewise, after dying a few times to the cyclopse, (and similar world bosses) i will feel no doubt good when you kill him for the first time. Overall mechanics wise i'm pleased. It doesn't look like he'll be soloable, due to the healing, tank spike, and unavoidable damage showcased. So far those are good for open world bosses.
there are however a few improvements i want to see.
1) when the cyclops charges at someone, i would love to see camera shake that intensifies as he comes closer.
2) When he charges someone, if he uses his tree as a weapon, i want to see ground effects of where the tree scrapes the ground. Preferably these should last a significant amount of time. (Perhaps even a few hours after the boss has been defeated to show the fight marks)
3) The feet of the cyclops don't develop naturally, this causes some of his movement when patrolling to look weird.
4) many times the mages seemed to all cast the same spell at the same time, as well as receive a buff, at the same time. Was this intentional?
Overall the amount of spell effects on screen was, pretty good, however we weren't told if this is the default setting if you join raids or if this was manually adjusted for the raid or even if the spell effects have been toned down. As it is now, it looked great, but there is no information to gage how this was achieved. If this is standard settings, definatly well done.
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
It was really great to see the synergy of the group, in-action. There was a definite tank whom launched the battle, and the health-bars were clearly visible, allowing us to measure the effectiveness of the healer(s). The battle-mechanics were about what one might expect, from a first-of encounter. The preview made it look both lively and certainly group-reliant, and the environmental impact (i.e. the trees being knocked over) certainly added excitement and a bit of realism, in fighting an enemy of this strength/size.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
The Gorax from SWG and the world-bosses of Hoth in SWTOR rank up there, for me. Both required group-coordination and a reliance on healers, as well as a need to be ready for different agro-drops.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
If this is the first/one of the first open-world bosses, then the preview starts the record strong. The power of the boss seemed appropriate to the strength/numbers of the group(s) required to take it down. I felt like there could have been one or two more combat-progression mechanics (i.e. more agro-drops/random agro-draws, off-tanking needed for the wolf-spawns).
I noticed at the very end of the raid, the corpse of the raid boss disappears after it is looted. Five seconds after the loot roll completes, just poof! gone. I don't even know what to think of it. One moment it's there, the next it's as if it never existed. It's not even anti-climactic—that would be something at least. This is just strange. Strange to think that a unique, important, and rare open-world raid boss wouldn't also leave its corpse behind for longer than five seconds.
Its part of the lore, when something dies it becomes ash again, and when it respawnes it comes back from the ashes of creation
Yeah, but this didn't turn to ash; it just disappeared in an instant. And what you describe only applies to player character deaths currently.
Q: How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
A: I don't have big praises nor a big criticism, its combat preview was within expectation for a A2 WIP open world mid-low lvl Boss expected to act as an introduction to raiding, it is certainly reasonable for its purpose. Its mechanics and phases were simple enough, to the point a single well organized 8-man party(with the gear/stats presented) could deal with him(If not disturbed by other players/groups) even if at the cost of the fight lasting longer.
Q: What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
A: That would probably be Lineage 2's Valakas and Antharas, truly amazing Epic Boss fights.
Q: Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
- Liked the visuals. The level of effects seems about just right -- I've played a few games that had very dazzling spell & hit effects, resulting in extremely poor visibility during large fights. Ashes seems to be free of this problem so far.
- Liked the cyclops' ability to knock down trees as he walks, and the idea that you can hear this sound effect from a distance and realize he's spawned.
- The cyclops seems to have dropped a few equippment pieces directly as loot -- Will this be the norm when Ashes go live? I somehow had the impression that bosses in Ashes only drop rare gatherables as loot and the actual weapons/armors still need to be crafted by players...
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
-It seemed just about right for Lv.30
-I liked that the mechanics were easy to understand, without being telegraphed. The fight felt very on-your-toes and I think that's a very useful thing for lower level Raiders to experience early on.
The phases were also easy to understand, though I'd like to see the Frontal Charge when he's holding his tree to do a snow shovel effect and push everyone who gets hit out of position, and end up over to where the charge stops.
-I loved the Tank getting knocked down from the Tree Spike, really great visual impact there.
The green Ghost Wolves need to be more of an immediate threat. Instead of running in circles, like Good Boi's with the zoomies - they should Leap onto players knocking them down, pinning them to the ground while tearing into them with savage non-stop bites! This way the DPS have to swing over and deal with them immediately if a Healer or Bard gets jumped.
-I really enjoyed the general chaos of the fight overall, it was quite a spectacle! And I think it cuold be even more exciting by adding knockbacks to the Cyclops Kicks and Punches.
-I would also like to see 3 mechanics added, the first is:
When he enrages, after his tantrum fist pounding the ground, I'd like to see him grab the main tank with both hands and just start squeezing him as hard as he can, this will kill the Tank if the Cyclops hands aren't targeted by DPS and his grip broken. When the grip is broken, he turns and literally chucks the tank at the Healer with the highest threat level. Crashing into each other they go skittering across the ground. That visual would be incredible!
The 2nd mechanic i'd like to see added, is a modification to the Tree/Charge.
Add a snow shovel effect to his Tree Charge where if anyone is hit, it pushes them out of position, all the way over to where the Cyclops Tree Charge ends. That would cause a bit more scrambling of formations, etc, without being too punishing.
The 3rd mechanic I'd like to see added is,
During the Tree-in-hand phase, at random - grab any Melee DPS or Offtank, pitch them into the air - and Baseball bat hit them at least 300 yards in any direction. It would be terrifying, and hilarious!
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
-I really enjoy Notorious Monster Hunting, and I hope you'll be able to buy "Hunting Tags" at the Lodges, which are Private hunts wherever the X is marked on the map you're given. You or your hunting party go out and try to fill the Tag by Killing whichever sized creature you purchased. Even if these fights only dropped Bind-on-Pickup items, Recipes, etc, I think it would be a fun Guild Activity to get people to travel beyond the areas they'd normally go.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
-It seemed just about right, though I'd like to see the Fungus eating/Bad Breath attack turned into a massive Fart Attack Gas cloud instead. Add a knockback effect to it, and non-dispellable poison damage to it. That would be really funny! And an early opportunity for new players to learn the uses of Antidote potions!
I feel as if the boss should be larger in size than what was displaced. I also feel as if the tree's should also be larger in size, comparing it to the large tree Tumok was holding the trees look like saplings.
That being said one thought I had was alternate endings of the battle.
If the party was in good enough unison they might be able to try to kill Tumok without killing the tree he plants down for healing. (this would likely be a much more difficult fight that takes longer), however once defeated the tree remains in the ground where you could have 2 options.
1. Have a master gatherer shop down the tree for rare lumber.
2. Have a master gatherer tend to the tree to try to grow a super rare tree that would have some large effect on the environment (this would likely be very difficult since you must protect it from other players who want to cut it down as a resource).
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops?
Obviously it's not 100% ready (pre Alpha stage) but you're going in the right direction with this. Animation Spells don't feel overwhelming, just kamera shake, and this shock wave was too much. I hope we can tune it down in settings.
Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
For the new players for sure. DPS Check, Healing Check, healing form shrooms, It will be fantastic if we can kill him at stage 2 without destroying the Tree and collect some Rare Resources from this
Loot UI for me excellent I love simple minimalistic and elegant stuff. Mobs dont attacking you right away was super cool for sure. WHERE WAS THE FIGHTER?
Comments
I agree with this. I would rather the world bosses drop jewellry too. Jewellry can last a long time and can be very valuable.
You probably aren't there just yet, but some things I would like to see in a future boss demo is:
Basically interested in how different factors mix things up to keep the fights interesting and players engaged to have to react to differences from a previous time they did the encounter
- Overall I enjoyed the world boss showcase. Like you guys have stated this is the first world boss players encounter when they start in the Riverlands. So his mechanics were simple for the common player but maybe new to newer players and I like that. As you said it is an introduction to the world boss raiding and it should be rather simple! Tanks have to look out for the big smash and be quick to block it, healers/supporters have to keep an eye on the healthbars and keep them topped up bevor the shockwave comes and dds need to be aware and change targets boss - tree totem - adds and watch their positioning so they dont get collateral smashed by his attacks and go all out with dmg in phase 3 but dont bring the boss to phase 3 when the tree totem from phase 2 is still standing.
- Multi-group gameplay is always welcome for me and necessary in a mmorpg
- Also necessary are boss phases, imo every boss mob should have at least 2 phases. It just brings surprises when you encounter them the first time and it is just more enjoyable to have variety for mechanics and also maybe some storytelling to the different phases, for example FromSoftware does it really well in their games: Darksouls series, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring.
- Also for some more mechanic feedback: maybe give the Cyclops some grab mechanics to throw players/objects around and some kicks to use the players as a ball
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
- The Fel Reaver from wow tbc is one of my favorite encounters, maybe not from the fight itself but just from it´s precence. Just his menacing sounds and stomping while getting closer to you was so scary back in the day and from the distance you just see this giant thing and you have never seen anthing like it before in the game. I think most world bosses should be really intimidating so your first reaction is like "what the hell" and back off a few steps. There should be a reason for them to be called a word boss. But that said it would be interessting to have world bosses that are actively hidden, using camouflage similar to reallife animals basically melting themself into the scenery. These world bosses linger around waiting for stray players and attacking them when they least expect it, coming out of the ground or pouncing at them or falling from the ceiling of a cave on their pray.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
- My biggest concern would be high lvl player taking part in these lower lvl fights. Would have been nice to get your thoughts on this topic. Do their lvls and dmg get scaled down while near the world boss or are they completely hinderd from partaking in the fight? If there are no counter measures against higher lvled players interfering or taking part in these fights, the fights will get too easy and irrelevant or groups in the actual lvl range will just get bullied away. I personally really dislike it when higher players make low lvl content irrelevant for other players or hinder them taking part in it. It´s nice to have help sometimes from higher players but it should not make the content a joke.
Anyways thanks for this months update and I am so exited to see what you guys have in store in the upcoming updates! Keep up your awesome work!
Hate to extend this discussion to infinity, but I disagree pretty harshly. I actually hate when the complexity is high but the stakes are low. It teaches players to be careless and only play around specific major mechanics, instead of staying aware of the complete bigger picture. ESO does this in pretty much all of its content that isn't the highest tier competitive PvE achievement/highscore stuff, and its what turns the game into a mindless daily grind.
I'd much rather have low-stakes bosses being low complexity with big impact if you mess up (or have a bad build and don't fulfill your role in the party, etc.), and then increase the complexity as the content gets to higher tiers, while keeping the health & punishment damage consistent.
The boss looks great as an introductory worldboss. Ive seen some people say the boss isnt hard enough, but I assume this isnt meant to be that hard.
I spotted that in the third phase, each time he does his groundfirst aoe stomp, the number of stomps increases by 1. This i think is a nice way of doing the enrage. When players push the boss to P3, they are on a timeframe to kill him or his AOE stomps will wipe the raid. I saw a lot of people say that the boss was too easy, but this time pressure + the threat of pvp happening during the fight, taking away from your dps, makes this a very good first challenge in my oppinion.
I also really liked the multiple POVs during the stream, i think this is something you guys should keep doing for showcases where multiple classes are in play. I think it would be better if you guys showcase each POV a little longer at a time though, in this stream it felt like the swaps were happening a bit too fast at times, but im sure with time you guys will improve on this.
The only thing i didnt really like were the healing vfx. In my oppinion they are still very over the top. The screen tears and bright flashing all over the screen just doesnt look good to me.
Overall really happy with what was shown, im exited to see more.
Keep up the great work!
Would prefer the dead raid boss could be walked and jumped on, not walked through (current)
I loved the combat preview, the spell FX were extremely visually pleasing, notably with the level of particle FX present. If that amount of VFX was the end result placed into the game at launch, that would be excellent. The mechanics were interesting, I loved the swapping POVs with the healers and mages, it looked extremely engaging, fun, and definitely requiring your attention, I loved it. The boss phases were also excellent, notably so for a lower level world raid boss, and they were clear and distinct between phases. Every boss should have phases, and if not phases, then adds brought in with their own mechanics to vary the playing field and how the raid fights the boss/adds in order to shift the method of combat.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
N/A
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
I’m extremely excited with the unique mechanics I saw in the cyclops preview. Planting the tree down and having to DPS the tree and fungal spores to prevent healing (or allow the spores to heal team members at the cost of potentially healing the boss), was extremely unique and very interesting to see, I’m excited to see what mechanics the team builds off of this. I think more interaction and relevancy from the additional mobs would have been interesting to see, the spirit wolves, as it didn’t seem like they did much, but to be frank, not every boss fight needs to have adds. With the interesting mechanics and boss phases that were implemented, the introduction of adds wasn’t necessary (always appreciated, but not always necessary when the boss is extremely engaging in its own. I would wager this varies on a boss by boss basis.)
In short, I loved it! Keep up the amazing work!
For an alpha state, it looked pretty good, but it need a loooooot of polish. Mechanics were simple and straightforward even if I would like more clarity in the way they are conveyed to the player. The relative “easiness” of the fight kinda washed off the sense of danger and excitement that a “World Boss” fight need to convey. The music was missing too, and the backstory experienced by the player to truly enjoy it. Other than that, yeah it was cool. Particularly liked the different behaviors of the spiders I hope to see more of that in the release.
Effects were nice, specially the Wind Blow. Everything was readable, except the purposes of the Wolves at the end. The shrooms could be a little more visible too.
To be honest there is not a lot of world bosses that gave me that of an impression. The hard part of making a world boss memorable it’s the setting and how you access it in the world, often in other MMO they are just at a spot you can easily access and are that different of a raid boss where you need to overcome challenges to have the right to face it. If facing this world boss is meaningful, if I have to overcome hardships to access it, then it will be rewarding.
I feel like Guild Wars 2 with progressive events are the best at that. The dragon in the last expansion is a long event with phase leading to a final fight, like an open world raid. I liked that.
ESO is pretty good at Arena World boss with interesting mechanics too.
It's the journey to the WB that is important, not so much the baddass boss at the end for me. But heh, badass is always good too.
The winter setting was a good choice for clarity of vision and not disturb the focus of the showcase, but the “Arena” need a lot of polish in this season.
Love the fact that it is a wandering boss who interact with the world. More please.
I am concerned about the fine tuning of the world boss and it’s real difficulty when all the characters and class will have their powers etc even if it’s an “Early” world boss.
Overall I think you are on the good way, this is a good starting point for an alpha point of view.
As always my critics come from love of the project and the goal is just to help you make the best game you can at release and forward.
Please, Hydra Swan WB.
It would be realy cool if he had a mechanic to pick up a random player and eat him, no resurection possible since there is no corpse left. only way to beat this is to stun him 3 times within a few seconds after he picks up the player.
Also it should def hurt if he steps on you, even if it isn't an attack.
For a low lvl world boss it looks great, even the fact that this game has low lvl raid/world bosses is great. Realy a cut above the rest
It was nice seeing more than 3 or 4 players doing content. The mechanics did not seem to complicated, which is good. I think the struggle was creating enough mechanics without the need or desire of add ons to complete said mechanics. The issue is people have played mmo's for so long and they expect perfection early on or bosses with a plethora of mechanics. They do not desire simplicity anymore.
I hope intrepid simply goes up in difficulty for bosses based off level. Keep the lower level bosses simple as far as mechanics and then create more challenging foes for the higher levels. This allows new players who have not played mmo's for years to learn and grow as a player. Yes some may feel bored... but they are going to no life grind to the higher content anyways.
Please just keep mechanics fun and thought out... and it not turn into a... hey lets just add a bunch of health to make it more difficult. Mechanics over adding of health makes for a more pleasant experience imo. But again do not go over the top, to where a new player has no idea what is going on.
Unfortunately, I have been left disheartened after this months livestream. The scale of Tumok, the mechanics, the damage profiles, the visuals. It just left me feeling so underwhelmed and I think a lot of this has to do with where I thought the combat direction would go rather than where it is now.
For some context on why I feel this way and what I would like to see done about it, I'll preface it with the following:
After watching the ranger, cleric, tank & mage previews. I have been left stumped, for the first time I feel like Ashes may not be the MMO for me. And as the community is so quick to remind people of, this is okay. I’m not angry, I’m not disappointed. I’m confused more than anything. I have been invested in this games development, for years. I research topics on the wiki when I’m curious about different aspects of the game, but one aspect of the game that I chalked up as going to be ground-breaking was it’s hybrid combat. It’s one of the things that drew me to the game in the first place when I first saw A Mages Life. Is it a case now that the action element of AOC's "hybrid" combat has been abandoned & it's nothing more than a novelty camera view? If I'm not mistaken, this encounter is over half way through the levelling experience and yet it did not appear to include any mechanics that involve "action-based skills". Within Azherae's post I went into a few mechanics that could have been implemented using "Weak Points" such as Tumok's eye or legs that when hit with "aimed" attacks could stun him during animation wind ups, an example below:
"GRAB'EM" (Aimed Attack)
Tumok reaches down and picks up a random player, winding up to throw them a significant distance from him into the air, resulting in an almost guaranteed death. During his wind up animation the group have to focus fire on his eye, utilising "skill shot" abilities to stun him for 5 seconds, causing him to drop the player and make him vulnerable to 10% increased damage for the duration of the stun. Tumok will then cover his eye with his free hand for a certain amount of time, rendering this stun useless, so use it wisely!
See Hinox Fight for a similar mechanic refence, you can also shoot them in the legs to stun them:
Monster Hunter World - Alatreon Fight for good examples of wind up mechanics:
Shadow of the Colossus - Gaius for the sense of scale I was expecting from the Cyclops as a world boss. Due to the sheer size of him, his attacks are extremely telegraphed but hugely destructive. You also feel like you are fighting this insurmountable opponent but once it's down there's an epic death animation equally as destructive as it's attacks making it feel like a HUGE achievement. I think because Tumok was shorter than the surrounding trees his scale seemed to be too small. Gaius's legs were the same height as Tumok.
With the above being said. I had not anticipated that an encounter at 30 out of 50 levels would lean so heavily into tab targeting with there being no emphasis on the “hybrid” aspect of the combat, seemingly in any of the previews, not even a snippet of an ability. The fact that the ranger could free fire using the action camera gave me so much hope for the next ranged abilities we would see. Alas, there were none from the "Action" side in these further previews. I believe that this is significantly effecting what "could be" in terms of combat for bosses like the Cyclops, if the PVE enemies in AOC had "Weak Points" in theme with their overall design that are targeted by action abilities this opens up a completely unique type of combat encounter where action combat favoured players are desirable aswell as tab target favoured players.
As for the current Cyclops battle I have broken this down into some key points I feel like "make" a boss encounter from a PvE perspective and are ofcourse subjective:
Overall Difficulty: 3/10
Explanation: For a boss that is over half way through the levelling experience I would have hoped that it would of been a minimum of 5/10. By this point, elite mobs should have challenged players enough in grouped / solo content with mini mechanics to be ready for a challenge of higher magnitude such as Tumok.
Skill Expression: 2/10
Explanation: Did players have to dodge incoming mechanics or think ahead about their positioning because of damage profiles? Did players have to use specific abilities in order to get them through the fight? I'll make reference to Azherae's thread on "TheoryRaid" again.
Player Engagement: 2/10
Explanation: Did mechanics involve the player having to engage in movement or interaction with objects in order to progress the fight? Boss fights usually have hurdles and there were hurdles in killing Tumok, but they were copy and pasted. "Tab target this, kill it as quick as you can upon spawn." Difficulty and player engagement are not mutually exclusive. You can have swathes of interactive mechanics throughout the fight without exponentially increasing difficulty.
Immersion: 3/10
Explanation: Tumok's fight was severely underwhelming from an immersion point of view, he was considerably smaller than some of the surrounding trees making him seem less immense. For the scale of Verra I was expecting him to tower over trees, knocking them down with his legs with ease, like walking through grass. His scale in turn effects his animations which in turn effects his mechanics. I believe he is currently the size of an elite mob and should be scaled up considerably to be a world boss threat, one where people have to really think about engaging him aswell as people engaging in pvp as they too could get killed due to the sheer scale and destruction Tumok could dish out to both groups. Getting a raid together to kill a cyclops should not be the only criteria, I want to feel nervous regardless of how many people I bring. I want people to think twice about attacking a raid whilst killing Tumok because he could quite easily wipe their raid with a well positioned charge, further reinforcing the Risk v Reward goal of AOC.
Risk v Reward: 2/10
Explanation: What is currently driving players to want to kill Tumok? Better yet, what is the driving factor in another raid wanting to stop a raid from killing Tumok? Does he give everyone a buff to XP gains for the next 24 hours? Does he drop a sword that is better than anything else you'll get in the next 20 levels? Does he drop extremely rare materials? No insight was really given on this other than some weapons dropping, which for a level 30 boss could very well be not worth the risk. Because of corruption, would a level 50 raid not be able to stop the level 30 raid from killing him or would they be locked in the same high level nodes because it's pointless in travelling out of the high level nodes for this kind of reason?
I don't want this post to come across as a bash, because it's not intended to be so. I just honestly believe these raid boss level encounters can be so much more in AOC than what was displayed and with a little bit of verbal insight during these kinds of streams we could be given some information that would resolve much of these concerns.
My biggest concern is if we move into Alpha 2 without a long portion of player testing that is under NDA in order to gather feedback on combat and encounters prior to it being opened up to the general public. Their criticisms will be far harsher than those who are as invested as us on the forums.
What if the corpse of a raid boss stayed around for some time longer? Maybe hours after? or days, even? What if the corpse of a raid boss went through stages of decay for a number of real-time days that indicates the passing of time since it was taken down? Say an open-world raid boss had a 6-day respawn timer and after it died there lay a fresh corpse of the mob where it was fought. This would be a sign that it has been less than 24 hours since it was killed. Later at the same sight, one finds some decayed flesh and bones. This would be a sign it's been about 2-3 days since it was taken down. Then somewhere around days 4 and 5 one can see major decay with just bones covered in sediment from nature over time. Players notice this and know it's almost time for the raid boss to respawn.
I think it would be cool to reckon the passing of time based on the states of a defeated raid mob's body. This could be done with any non-instanced raid mob. And I think it would be especially cool to see for a giant mob like a dragon. (Does a dragon corporeally disassemble? or does it have some magical property where it turns to stone and crumbles?)
And finally: Just don't despawn an instanced raid mob's defeated corpse after looting. Let it simply be there until everyone leaves the instance.
Its part of the lore, when something dies it becomes ash again, and when it respawnes it comes back from the ashes of creation
@ELRYNO Obviously the balancing part of the development proces hasn't been done yet, this showcase is meant to show the overal mechs and feel of this boss. This is NOT a finished product yet
@ELRYNO This is an MMO not call of duty, you have lots of skills and in action combat it is very difficult to utilize more than 5 or 6 skills at a time because of the need to assign hotkeys for all of them, in tab target you don't have this problem but it makes the gameplay slower and less action packed. Personaly i don't see a way to get all the benefits of both and non of the downsides. Having the option to choose between action camera and tab and to customise your UI to get things the way the way that works best for you is as good as we can hope for
REAL action camera the way it is in shooters like call of duty is impossible in an MMO, you will always need things like aim assist
I'm not really looking for feedback on my own feedback from other members of the community, my feedback is for Intrepid.
Partially because of this reason.
I understand it's in development, which is why I am giving my feedback on their current iteration of boss development, which I believe to be below par if it stays it's current course. Your opinion on my opinion has no bearing on the validity of my opinion. If your opinion is that my feedback at this moment in time is worthless, then we may aswell all never log in to this forum again until the game releases. Unless of course it is your belief that "positive" feedback at this point in development is the only worthwhile feedback, in which case I again suggest we all reframe from logging in and posting until release to avoid an echo chamber of delusion. If what you say is correct and that this showcase was meant to display the overall mechanics and feel of this boss then my opinions on the overall mechanics and feel of this boss still stand.
1. Big boss = sad melees who can't enjoy the view because their screen is captured by one giant toe (or they are forced to up their camera into the sky and ignore problems on the ground).
2. Big boss + action combat = sad melees who can't interact with bunch of the "weak points" (except "hit second toe an then hit the third one" which is kinda sad).
3. About level and difficulty: "This cyclops is one of the first raids players will experience in the Riverlands and is intended as a lower level introduction to raiding in Ashes." - Steven's comment.
You dont have to buy it now. Steven said, that they will announce any changes in pre-order ahead to give others a chance to buy it.
So please dont panic, there is no reason and they will tell us on time.
1. Current Fight = sad melees who cant enjoy the view because their screen is captured by one giant leg. (they are currently forced to up their camera into the sky and ignore problems on the ground to see the upper portion of Tumok) I fail to see why making Tumok any bigger would make this an issue as it is already an issue? Case and point below:
If anything, by making him larger and having his attacks more impactful due to his size melee players will be more inclined to look at him. So...
2. Current Fight = sad melees who are pressing 1,2,3 in that order whilst staring at his leg. If he winds up to charge and a weak point is exposed, I.E his right leg. They will be incentivised to move to his right leg from his left leg and focus that, therefore being incentivised to look at him...So...
3. I understand it's in development, which is why I am giving my feedback on their current iteration of boss development, which I believe to be below par if it stays it's current course. Your opinion on my opinion has no bearing on the validity of my opinion. If your opinion is that my feedback at this moment in time is worthless, then we may aswell all never log in to this forum again until the game releases. Unless of course it is your belief that "positive" feedback at this point in development is the only worthwhile feedback, in which case I again suggest we all reframe from logging in and posting until release to avoid an echo chamber of delusion. If what you say is correct and that this showcase was meant to display the overall mechanics and feel of this boss then my opinions on the overall mechanics and feel of this boss still stand. As stated in my previous comment.
"Player Engagement: 2/10
Explanation: Did mechanics involve the player having to engage in movement or interaction with objects in order to progress the fight? Boss fights usually have hurdles and there were hurdles in killing Tumok, but they were copy and pasted. "Tab target this, kill it as quick as you can upon spawn." Difficulty and player engagement are not mutually exclusive. You can have swathes of interactive mechanics throughout the fight without exponentially increasing difficulty."
Again, I'm not really looking for feedback on my feedback. But I appreciate the ammo for my previous points.
- Visually the boss looks cool and the effects from his attacks look cool.
- For a lower level world boss the mechanics were good and interesting.
- Big fan of multi phased bosses so the rage mode was a happy surprise.
- Combat looked boring yet less chaotic, most likely due to the tuning of particle effects.
- Abilities seem to take over the majority of the time spent in combat, Like to see more Basic Attacks, Dodging, Blocking, and Movement(within reason) for the majority of time in combat. Abilities should be strong and enhance combat rather than all the combat has to offer.
16 abilities on Steven’s bar seems like too much. I would rather have to choose 7 abilities when choosing from 20 than choose 16 abilities out of 20 or 30. Less abilities mean smarter choices and more carefully thought out builds. More abilities actually leads to less choice sense you end up taking them all or all the good ones anyways.
Suggestions
- Keep expanding off of this boss fight. You guys are headed in the right direction with that.
- Fewer Abilities, like 5 base slots given to you and then 5 extended slots for abilities with a cool down penalty for each one used increasing linearly. Example: Say I have Fire Bolt, FireBall, Fire Shield, Ice Shard, and Ice Storm as my core 5 abilities and I wanted to have Teleport as well I then can use an extended Slot to gain that ability but now all of my abilities cool downs are increased by like 20% so my fireball spell with a cool down of 20 secs is now 24 secs.
- Make combat more dynamic with Blocking, Dodging, Movement, and weapon(basic attacks) skill trees. Give us the choice to play how we want in combat let us spec into a tanky monster with a bunch of specs into blocking with the expense of being able to move or dodge as well as others. Or let us become a more mobile player but with very bad blocking and defense so it turns into high risk high reward. There are plenty of ways to do this for both tab target and action combat.
Please let us see a 1on1 or group vs group pvp showcase. This game is PVX but since the combat updates after alpha 1, to my knowledge we have not seen any pvp only pve
Luckily 4k versions are uploaded quite fast, and after rewatching them a few times i am, rather pleased with the showcase. The Cyclopse boss, seems inspired by the Fel Reaver of WoW TBC, a mob that i both love and hate. Likewise, after dying a few times to the cyclopse, (and similar world bosses) i will feel no doubt good when you kill him for the first time. Overall mechanics wise i'm pleased. It doesn't look like he'll be soloable, due to the healing, tank spike, and unavoidable damage showcased. So far those are good for open world bosses.
there are however a few improvements i want to see.
1) when the cyclops charges at someone, i would love to see camera shake that intensifies as he comes closer.
2) When he charges someone, if he uses his tree as a weapon, i want to see ground effects of where the tree scrapes the ground. Preferably these should last a significant amount of time. (Perhaps even a few hours after the boss has been defeated to show the fight marks)
3) The feet of the cyclops don't develop naturally, this causes some of his movement when patrolling to look weird.
4) many times the mages seemed to all cast the same spell at the same time, as well as receive a buff, at the same time. Was this intentional?
Overall the amount of spell effects on screen was, pretty good, however we weren't told if this is the default setting if you join raids or if this was manually adjusted for the raid or even if the spell effects have been toned down. As it is now, it looked great, but there is no information to gage how this was achieved. If this is standard settings, definatly well done.
It was really great to see the synergy of the group, in-action. There was a definite tank whom launched the battle, and the health-bars were clearly visible, allowing us to measure the effectiveness of the healer(s). The battle-mechanics were about what one might expect, from a first-of encounter. The preview made it look both lively and certainly group-reliant, and the environmental impact (i.e. the trees being knocked over) certainly added excitement and a bit of realism, in fighting an enemy of this strength/size.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
The Gorax from SWG and the world-bosses of Hoth in SWTOR rank up there, for me. Both required group-coordination and a reliance on healers, as well as a need to be ready for different agro-drops.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
If this is the first/one of the first open-world bosses, then the preview starts the record strong. The power of the boss seemed appropriate to the strength/numbers of the group(s) required to take it down. I felt like there could have been one or two more combat-progression mechanics (i.e. more agro-drops/random agro-draws, off-tanking needed for the wolf-spawns).
Yeah, but this didn't turn to ash; it just disappeared in an instant. And what you describe only applies to player character deaths currently.
A: I don't have big praises nor a big criticism, its combat preview was within expectation for a A2 WIP open world mid-low lvl Boss expected to act as an introduction to raiding, it is certainly reasonable for its purpose. Its mechanics and phases were simple enough, to the point a single well organized 8-man party(with the gear/stats presented) could deal with him(If not disturbed by other players/groups) even if at the cost of the fight lasting longer.
Q: What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
A: That would probably be Lineage 2's Valakas and Antharas, truly amazing Epic Boss fights.
Q: Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
A: Nothing in particular.
Aren't we all sinners?
- Liked the cyclops' ability to knock down trees as he walks, and the idea that you can hear this sound effect from a distance and realize he's spawned.
- The cyclops seems to have dropped a few equippment pieces directly as loot -- Will this be the norm when Ashes go live? I somehow had the impression that bosses in Ashes only drop rare gatherables as loot and the actual weapons/armors still need to be crafted by players...
-It seemed just about right for Lv.30
-I liked that the mechanics were easy to understand, without being telegraphed. The fight felt very on-your-toes and I think that's a very useful thing for lower level Raiders to experience early on.
The phases were also easy to understand, though I'd like to see the Frontal Charge when he's holding his tree to do a snow shovel effect and push everyone who gets hit out of position, and end up over to where the charge stops.
-I loved the Tank getting knocked down from the Tree Spike, really great visual impact there.
The green Ghost Wolves need to be more of an immediate threat. Instead of running in circles, like Good Boi's with the zoomies - they should Leap onto players knocking them down, pinning them to the ground while tearing into them with savage non-stop bites! This way the DPS have to swing over and deal with them immediately if a Healer or Bard gets jumped.
-I really enjoyed the general chaos of the fight overall, it was quite a spectacle! And I think it cuold be even more exciting by adding knockbacks to the Cyclops Kicks and Punches.
-I would also like to see 3 mechanics added, the first is:
When he enrages, after his tantrum fist pounding the ground, I'd like to see him grab the main tank with both hands and just start squeezing him as hard as he can, this will kill the Tank if the Cyclops hands aren't targeted by DPS and his grip broken. When the grip is broken, he turns and literally chucks the tank at the Healer with the highest threat level. Crashing into each other they go skittering across the ground. That visual would be incredible!
The 2nd mechanic i'd like to see added, is a modification to the Tree/Charge.
Add a snow shovel effect to his Tree Charge where if anyone is hit, it pushes them out of position, all the way over to where the Cyclops Tree Charge ends. That would cause a bit more scrambling of formations, etc, without being too punishing.
The 3rd mechanic I'd like to see added is,
During the Tree-in-hand phase, at random - grab any Melee DPS or Offtank, pitch them into the air - and Baseball bat hit them at least 300 yards in any direction. It would be terrifying, and hilarious!
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
-I really enjoy Notorious Monster Hunting, and I hope you'll be able to buy "Hunting Tags" at the Lodges, which are Private hunts wherever the X is marked on the map you're given. You or your hunting party go out and try to fill the Tag by Killing whichever sized creature you purchased. Even if these fights only dropped Bind-on-Pickup items, Recipes, etc, I think it would be a fun Guild Activity to get people to travel beyond the areas they'd normally go.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
-It seemed just about right, though I'd like to see the Fungus eating/Bad Breath attack turned into a massive Fart Attack Gas cloud instead. Add a knockback effect to it, and non-dispellable poison damage to it. That would be really funny! And an early opportunity for new players to learn the uses of Antidote potions!
I feel as if the boss should be larger in size than what was displaced. I also feel as if the tree's should also be larger in size, comparing it to the large tree Tumok was holding the trees look like saplings.
That being said one thought I had was alternate endings of the battle.
If the party was in good enough unison they might be able to try to kill Tumok without killing the tree he plants down for healing. (this would likely be a much more difficult fight that takes longer), however once defeated the tree remains in the ground where you could have 2 options.
1. Have a master gatherer shop down the tree for rare lumber.
2. Have a master gatherer tend to the tree to try to grow a super rare tree that would have some large effect on the environment (this would likely be very difficult since you must protect it from other players who want to cut it down as a resource).
Obviously it's not 100% ready (pre Alpha stage) but you're going in the right direction with this. Animation Spells don't feel overwhelming, just kamera shake, and this shock wave was too much. I hope we can tune it down in settings.
Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
For the new players for sure. DPS Check, Healing Check, healing form shrooms, It will be fantastic if we can kill him at stage 2 without destroying the Tree and collect some Rare Resources from this
Loot UI for me excellent I love simple minimalistic and elegant stuff. Mobs dont attacking you right away was super cool for sure. WHERE WAS THE FIGHTER?