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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Let's TheoryRaid #8: Minhocao vs. Queen Bellandir (Guild Version)
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Today's TheoryRaid is brought to you by Beetlejuice (he's running helterskelter away from both of these monstrosities).
Mostly it's to talk about an interesting thing I've been noticing in Throne and Liberty boss development that I think is cool. They've found the cleanest way (relative to their own game) to 'replace the TP Gauge' on Boss Monsters, which leaves me a lot of room to talk and compare things.
For those unfamiliar with the TP Gauge concept in FF11, you can assume that the post itself will explain it mostly as I go and you don't need to check or read about it. What you might actually want to check is Minhocao.
Minhocao is interesting in FF11 history because it's one of the few mobs whose attacks hit players outside of the group/Alliance that has engaged it, and in an even more unique, dangerous, and for some, frustrating, way, than others. Specifically:
Uses a move called "Gorge" that drains HP from everyone in range of it then uses it to attack people with hate by using "Disgorge"
And yes, Disgorge's damage is somewhat based on the amount of HP absorbed with Gorge, even though that actually has a 'cap' so it's not world-ending.
TP Moves (the special attacks of FF11 mobs) happen when the mob has been successfully struck enough times (or lands physical hits on someone). The more people hitting it, the more often it can do these attacks. Many strategies involve simply not hitting it with as many people, or finding paths to damage that minimize this process, but on bosses like this, usually fought with 12-18 people, it can be ignored in favor of damage normally.
Minhocao is somewhat an exception to that 'rule', because everything it does is quite 'anti-zerg', but survival against it still practically requires all the people you could bring (at the time before a level cap raise made it less relevant).
So, in short, you hit it, it either 'absorbs all your health', 'absorbs all your buffs', or does one of the more 'normal' Sandworm attacks, and it's entirely random which one happens. But if you just 'kept blindly hitting it after Gorge' with everyone's health low, you're still somewhat safe, because it 'can't use Gorge twice', it 'must use Disgorge instead' (that's how I've always experienced it, anyway). Nevertheless, depending on your group composition, there are 'times you shouldn't hit it' as much, and those differ by group, and by randomness, and the other TP Moves of Sandworms are still important.
The key feeling that this achieves, though, is 'stop hitting this for a short period because it is too dangerous and we don't have our defensive abilities available right now', but not in a very binary way. Players have different options for risking it, for deciding who should hit it, and for changing those factors by group composition in many ways. One of the most important effects of this in FF11 is that it reduced the 'ranged DPS' meta-tilt that most games have, because 'Rangers still feed TP'. Sure, they're getting the Tank killed instead of themselves, but it's still important.
Queen Bellandir's guild version struggles slightly with that 'ranged DPS meta' because of the difference, but still does an admirable job due to more 'conventional' design principles applied well. It takes the 'don't attack it/be here for a short time' concept and spreads it out over other mechanics to form a wholistic equivalent, without devolving purely into 'don't stand where you can get hurt'.
The Queen has quite a few attacks that threaten people other than the tank, but not 'quickly'. A somewhat randomly targeted 'Venom Splash' that doesn't even aim at players, but is very likely to hit some Ranged attackers, applying her venom which is not simple to remove, and what I'll call 'Chroma Larvae' where players get Larvae attached to them, and one or more of those turns red after some time and explodes in an AoE, forcing players to scatter while she's doing other things (if not prevented from doing this by another one of her attacks). Other attacks are "Sand Lash", a sometimes-oneshot aimed behind her relative to her normal attack target, so you need to be close enough to know who that is, or too far to be hit, and "Royal Crush" which just drops her whole body onto a space roughly in front of her but if you're slightly to the side of the impact zone can still kill you, as her body 'flattens'.
This combines with 'SandPit', a quicksand-area draw-in for anyone who was roughly in melee range and didn't notice it was happening (or chose to ignore it), and now the fight shifts to being about knowing when certain combinations will lead to big damage while you're lower on health due to having too many poison stacks, and when you will need certain heals vs when you can afford to let other health recovery options 'take care of it'.
The poison stacks are close to the 'key' here, in terms of 'acting in place of the TP Gauge', and many other (solo) bosses recently introduced have somewhat similar mechanics. A status that builds up over time and can't be cleansed, but can be temporarily/discretionally avoided for some period through extremely skillful play, holding back offense, or 'occupying a position that increases the threat of the other options the mob has'. In some cases the status has a timer of 15-30s, and in others it's permanent until some other mechanic or change in the fight happens.
The limits on a player character's cooldowns, stamina, or mana regen, though, almost always make this period of 'being able to avoid the stacking of this status' finite. If the boss applies the status randomly by doing things like Venom Splash or some physical attack that could be dodged or blocked, eventually the player runs low on the Stamina required to avoid them all. So they have 'control' over when the stacks build up, and this parallels the TP Gauge interaction well enough in many cases.
Similarly, just as with Minhocao, sometimes you can see from the rhythm of Queen Bellandir that you can risk just powering through even a 'Chroma Larvae'->Sandpit combo, because the timer on most poison stacks has just run out or is about to, and your Healer probably has their AoE heal/defense skill ready. Each move that Bellandir does has a slightly different 'optimal defense response', often from different group members, and even though they aren't so random that she can 'often do certain ones back to back' or 'repeat the same complex one twice', the cooldowns on those defense responses are sometimes quite long, forcing at least some synergy and coordination. 'Can we risk this random combination because DaVinci's Courage should be up on one of our GreatSword users right now?', 'Should we go for damage during Sandpit since our Dagger users aren't poisoned and won't get caught in Sandlash even after Sandpit's knock-up?', and so on.
It may be quite some time before we reach the point of Developers in the 'new generation' of MMORPGs, being comfortable enough with balancing these, or even challenging groups in this way (you can just overwhelm Queen Bellandir with numbers, and most of the other mechanics are in Solo instanced content, as mentioned), and until then, it's likely to continue to be 'don't stand in the red'+'Tank can just grab aggro whenever' for a while, but I, for one, am glad to see a demonstration of a modern understanding of the design method. At least for me personally, it's been a long time coming.
Mostly it's to talk about an interesting thing I've been noticing in Throne and Liberty boss development that I think is cool. They've found the cleanest way (relative to their own game) to 'replace the TP Gauge' on Boss Monsters, which leaves me a lot of room to talk and compare things.
For those unfamiliar with the TP Gauge concept in FF11, you can assume that the post itself will explain it mostly as I go and you don't need to check or read about it. What you might actually want to check is Minhocao.
Minhocao is interesting in FF11 history because it's one of the few mobs whose attacks hit players outside of the group/Alliance that has engaged it, and in an even more unique, dangerous, and for some, frustrating, way, than others. Specifically:
Uses a move called "Gorge" that drains HP from everyone in range of it then uses it to attack people with hate by using "Disgorge"
And yes, Disgorge's damage is somewhat based on the amount of HP absorbed with Gorge, even though that actually has a 'cap' so it's not world-ending.
TP Moves (the special attacks of FF11 mobs) happen when the mob has been successfully struck enough times (or lands physical hits on someone). The more people hitting it, the more often it can do these attacks. Many strategies involve simply not hitting it with as many people, or finding paths to damage that minimize this process, but on bosses like this, usually fought with 12-18 people, it can be ignored in favor of damage normally.
Minhocao is somewhat an exception to that 'rule', because everything it does is quite 'anti-zerg', but survival against it still practically requires all the people you could bring (at the time before a level cap raise made it less relevant).
So, in short, you hit it, it either 'absorbs all your health', 'absorbs all your buffs', or does one of the more 'normal' Sandworm attacks, and it's entirely random which one happens. But if you just 'kept blindly hitting it after Gorge' with everyone's health low, you're still somewhat safe, because it 'can't use Gorge twice', it 'must use Disgorge instead' (that's how I've always experienced it, anyway). Nevertheless, depending on your group composition, there are 'times you shouldn't hit it' as much, and those differ by group, and by randomness, and the other TP Moves of Sandworms are still important.
The key feeling that this achieves, though, is 'stop hitting this for a short period because it is too dangerous and we don't have our defensive abilities available right now', but not in a very binary way. Players have different options for risking it, for deciding who should hit it, and for changing those factors by group composition in many ways. One of the most important effects of this in FF11 is that it reduced the 'ranged DPS' meta-tilt that most games have, because 'Rangers still feed TP'. Sure, they're getting the Tank killed instead of themselves, but it's still important.
Queen Bellandir's guild version struggles slightly with that 'ranged DPS meta' because of the difference, but still does an admirable job due to more 'conventional' design principles applied well. It takes the 'don't attack it/be here for a short time' concept and spreads it out over other mechanics to form a wholistic equivalent, without devolving purely into 'don't stand where you can get hurt'.
The Queen has quite a few attacks that threaten people other than the tank, but not 'quickly'. A somewhat randomly targeted 'Venom Splash' that doesn't even aim at players, but is very likely to hit some Ranged attackers, applying her venom which is not simple to remove, and what I'll call 'Chroma Larvae' where players get Larvae attached to them, and one or more of those turns red after some time and explodes in an AoE, forcing players to scatter while she's doing other things (if not prevented from doing this by another one of her attacks). Other attacks are "Sand Lash", a sometimes-oneshot aimed behind her relative to her normal attack target, so you need to be close enough to know who that is, or too far to be hit, and "Royal Crush" which just drops her whole body onto a space roughly in front of her but if you're slightly to the side of the impact zone can still kill you, as her body 'flattens'.
This combines with 'SandPit', a quicksand-area draw-in for anyone who was roughly in melee range and didn't notice it was happening (or chose to ignore it), and now the fight shifts to being about knowing when certain combinations will lead to big damage while you're lower on health due to having too many poison stacks, and when you will need certain heals vs when you can afford to let other health recovery options 'take care of it'.
The poison stacks are close to the 'key' here, in terms of 'acting in place of the TP Gauge', and many other (solo) bosses recently introduced have somewhat similar mechanics. A status that builds up over time and can't be cleansed, but can be temporarily/discretionally avoided for some period through extremely skillful play, holding back offense, or 'occupying a position that increases the threat of the other options the mob has'. In some cases the status has a timer of 15-30s, and in others it's permanent until some other mechanic or change in the fight happens.
The limits on a player character's cooldowns, stamina, or mana regen, though, almost always make this period of 'being able to avoid the stacking of this status' finite. If the boss applies the status randomly by doing things like Venom Splash or some physical attack that could be dodged or blocked, eventually the player runs low on the Stamina required to avoid them all. So they have 'control' over when the stacks build up, and this parallels the TP Gauge interaction well enough in many cases.
Similarly, just as with Minhocao, sometimes you can see from the rhythm of Queen Bellandir that you can risk just powering through even a 'Chroma Larvae'->Sandpit combo, because the timer on most poison stacks has just run out or is about to, and your Healer probably has their AoE heal/defense skill ready. Each move that Bellandir does has a slightly different 'optimal defense response', often from different group members, and even though they aren't so random that she can 'often do certain ones back to back' or 'repeat the same complex one twice', the cooldowns on those defense responses are sometimes quite long, forcing at least some synergy and coordination. 'Can we risk this random combination because DaVinci's Courage should be up on one of our GreatSword users right now?', 'Should we go for damage during Sandpit since our Dagger users aren't poisoned and won't get caught in Sandlash even after Sandpit's knock-up?', and so on.
It may be quite some time before we reach the point of Developers in the 'new generation' of MMORPGs, being comfortable enough with balancing these, or even challenging groups in this way (you can just overwhelm Queen Bellandir with numbers, and most of the other mechanics are in Solo instanced content, as mentioned), and until then, it's likely to continue to be 'don't stand in the red'+'Tank can just grab aggro whenever' for a while, but I, for one, am glad to see a demonstration of a modern understanding of the design method. At least for me personally, it's been a long time coming.
Stellar Devotion.
1
Comments
You brought a zerg and they're all attacking? Now there's a shitton of little mobs running around, who're about to hit your zerg with a huge aoe (could be mana burn, massive poison, burn, etc etc etc) and now you're somewhat fucked.
I always thought that the "environmental hazards based on player amount in the area" was meant to have a similar effect, but we've obviously not seen a single representation of that so far (outside of maaaybe the pools in the Twins battle, but I don't remember if those were reactive), so it's difficult to say either way.