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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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 #11: Adamantoise vs Pakilo Naru ('Boss Phases')
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Short(?) today because I couldn't find the sort of video/information I wanted for groups fighting Tumok...
People talk about bosses having Phases. I personally distinguish these from 'Buffs' or 'Abilities' by seeing if the enemy changed what they are doing in some way, not just 'what you need to do'. If it's just 'players changing what they need to do' it often feels to me personally like just a status or ability, especially in today's faster-paced/reasonable length boss battles (looking at you Pandemonium Warden )
But of course everything's on a spectrum with these designs, so today I'm bringing up the two that blur the line for me.
As with most older MMOs that produced content by reusing models and concepts, Adamantoise from Final Fantasy 11 is actually part of a whole mob family. (you need to check the second link if you have any interest in the specifics of abilities/general behaviours of this mob)
Pakilo Naru from Throne and Liberty is part of a different kind of 'Mob Family', heh.
Overall they are similar. Just think of them both as big turtles with big stomps, breath attacks, and sometimes 'a reason you don't want to stand near them'. They both have the ability to 'go into their shell' for a bit.
The difference in what happens when they do, is the thing that made me think about this (and obv then decide to rant on a forum about it). Note that neither of the linked pages explains the 'mechanic' so I need to spend a little time on that.
At certain points in fights, an Adamantoise mob 'turtles up', pulling its head into its shell and regenerating. The Regen is not an effect you can dispel, it's a 'state'. During this, the mob basically doesn't attack, and its defense goes up, but striking it still builds up TP gauge for both it, and players.
It stays in this state for various amounts of time, and various conditions cause it to re-emerge depending on which one it is. Let's assume the 'defaults' are 'has enough TP to do an effective attack' and 'has taken X amount of damage, even if that damage was regenerated'.
Players respond differently to this 'phase' depending on their team composition, time left before it Rages, location, weather, etc. The number of potential responses and variations is quite high so I won't go into all of them.
By contrast, Pakilo Naru 'turtles up' on a 'timer' that is somewhat visible in his Arena and then uses 'Obsidian Shell' with an exact duration, but otherwise doesn't change overall behaviour. So every X time, he performs a set of actions that lead to Obsidian Shell, functionally a Defense Buff, and then goes back to doing the usual things. Afaik Obsidian Shell is not dispellable (the game tells you that Greatsword users can do something during it, but it isn't clear yet to me what actual benefit that has or why it's important really - and I prefer not to just look up such things).
For both of these mobs, the minimal concept is obvious. 'Boost damage while the target is out of the shell'.
But they're both weird in terms of how to think about it. Pakilo Naru spends way more time out of Obsidian Shell than 'in it', and doesn't really regenerate, so, aside from a few classes 'waiting a few seconds longer to unleash damage', the change is minimal and it doesn't feel at all like a 'Phase'.
Adamantoise, however, can go right back into its shell if you burst damage 'too hard', with only a relatively small delay, forcing extreme coordination depending on the reason it came out of the shell (it must finish any special attacks first, so if it chooses to do one with a long animation, you get more time to damage it). This means that technically it 'turtling up' can end up not 'feeling like a Phase' for certain high damage groups, because for them, the mob spends most of its time in the shell while they do their best to coordinate their big damage bursts without dying.
The other component to this is the amount of time the fight is 'allowed to take'. Adamantoise enrages after 30m, which parallels the Guild Version of Pakilo Naru, which enrages after 10, I think (could be 15, it barely makes any difference to the thing being discussed).
Other members of the Family that you fight in Instances just time out and kick you out of the Instance after 30m, no Rage required. This parallels the 'Field Boss' (more realistically, Dominion) version of Pakilo Naru, which will time out after 25m (but Dominion version will suffer DoT on its own after a while because asking PvP-ers to actually kill a boss in time in any non-lopsided fight is basically silly, even considering how simplistic the actual boss is, mechanically).
This means that for certain smaller groups, there are strategies for defeating Enraged Adamantoise and Enraged Pakilo Naru, as long as you got their health low enough in time, but those same strategies can't be used for Instanced Adamantoise or Dominion Pakilo Naru.
The interesting aspect of this among my group was basically 'is it really a Phase if the boss doesn't change what they do and/or I can always see it coming?'
TL PvE is obviously simplistic for many reasons, but in this case the question is moreso a design one. Would Pakilo Naru be more 'interesting' in any real way if he worked more like Adamantoise and could spend more time (total) in Obsidian Shell? Would Adamantoise be more 'interesting' if it could cast spells while in its shell (well, the members of the Family that can cast, and we technically know one part of the answer to this).
I'd expect lots of different perspectives on this, given the PvX player spectrum in terms of what type of difficulty they consider interesting, but it made me wonder if there was an answer that could actually make most of the bell curve happy. I actually think that TL would need to somewhat rework Pakilo Naru to make his attacks work differently if Obsidian Shell was more of a Phase and not 'an ability', and similarly, only certain members of the Adamantoise family would be 'valid' or interesting if they were converted to PvX content of the type one sees in Dominion bosses or would see in Ashes of Creation.
But that's just a Theory.
People talk about bosses having Phases. I personally distinguish these from 'Buffs' or 'Abilities' by seeing if the enemy changed what they are doing in some way, not just 'what you need to do'. If it's just 'players changing what they need to do' it often feels to me personally like just a status or ability, especially in today's faster-paced/reasonable length boss battles (looking at you Pandemonium Warden )
But of course everything's on a spectrum with these designs, so today I'm bringing up the two that blur the line for me.
As with most older MMOs that produced content by reusing models and concepts, Adamantoise from Final Fantasy 11 is actually part of a whole mob family. (you need to check the second link if you have any interest in the specifics of abilities/general behaviours of this mob)
Pakilo Naru from Throne and Liberty is part of a different kind of 'Mob Family', heh.
Overall they are similar. Just think of them both as big turtles with big stomps, breath attacks, and sometimes 'a reason you don't want to stand near them'. They both have the ability to 'go into their shell' for a bit.
The difference in what happens when they do, is the thing that made me think about this (and obv then decide to rant on a forum about it). Note that neither of the linked pages explains the 'mechanic' so I need to spend a little time on that.
At certain points in fights, an Adamantoise mob 'turtles up', pulling its head into its shell and regenerating. The Regen is not an effect you can dispel, it's a 'state'. During this, the mob basically doesn't attack, and its defense goes up, but striking it still builds up TP gauge for both it, and players.
It stays in this state for various amounts of time, and various conditions cause it to re-emerge depending on which one it is. Let's assume the 'defaults' are 'has enough TP to do an effective attack' and 'has taken X amount of damage, even if that damage was regenerated'.
Players respond differently to this 'phase' depending on their team composition, time left before it Rages, location, weather, etc. The number of potential responses and variations is quite high so I won't go into all of them.
By contrast, Pakilo Naru 'turtles up' on a 'timer' that is somewhat visible in his Arena and then uses 'Obsidian Shell' with an exact duration, but otherwise doesn't change overall behaviour. So every X time, he performs a set of actions that lead to Obsidian Shell, functionally a Defense Buff, and then goes back to doing the usual things. Afaik Obsidian Shell is not dispellable (the game tells you that Greatsword users can do something during it, but it isn't clear yet to me what actual benefit that has or why it's important really - and I prefer not to just look up such things).
For both of these mobs, the minimal concept is obvious. 'Boost damage while the target is out of the shell'.
But they're both weird in terms of how to think about it. Pakilo Naru spends way more time out of Obsidian Shell than 'in it', and doesn't really regenerate, so, aside from a few classes 'waiting a few seconds longer to unleash damage', the change is minimal and it doesn't feel at all like a 'Phase'.
Adamantoise, however, can go right back into its shell if you burst damage 'too hard', with only a relatively small delay, forcing extreme coordination depending on the reason it came out of the shell (it must finish any special attacks first, so if it chooses to do one with a long animation, you get more time to damage it). This means that technically it 'turtling up' can end up not 'feeling like a Phase' for certain high damage groups, because for them, the mob spends most of its time in the shell while they do their best to coordinate their big damage bursts without dying.
The other component to this is the amount of time the fight is 'allowed to take'. Adamantoise enrages after 30m, which parallels the Guild Version of Pakilo Naru, which enrages after 10, I think (could be 15, it barely makes any difference to the thing being discussed).
Other members of the Family that you fight in Instances just time out and kick you out of the Instance after 30m, no Rage required. This parallels the 'Field Boss' (more realistically, Dominion) version of Pakilo Naru, which will time out after 25m (but Dominion version will suffer DoT on its own after a while because asking PvP-ers to actually kill a boss in time in any non-lopsided fight is basically silly, even considering how simplistic the actual boss is, mechanically).
This means that for certain smaller groups, there are strategies for defeating Enraged Adamantoise and Enraged Pakilo Naru, as long as you got their health low enough in time, but those same strategies can't be used for Instanced Adamantoise or Dominion Pakilo Naru.
The interesting aspect of this among my group was basically 'is it really a Phase if the boss doesn't change what they do and/or I can always see it coming?'
TL PvE is obviously simplistic for many reasons, but in this case the question is moreso a design one. Would Pakilo Naru be more 'interesting' in any real way if he worked more like Adamantoise and could spend more time (total) in Obsidian Shell? Would Adamantoise be more 'interesting' if it could cast spells while in its shell (well, the members of the Family that can cast, and we technically know one part of the answer to this).
I'd expect lots of different perspectives on this, given the PvX player spectrum in terms of what type of difficulty they consider interesting, but it made me wonder if there was an answer that could actually make most of the bell curve happy. I actually think that TL would need to somewhat rework Pakilo Naru to make his attacks work differently if Obsidian Shell was more of a Phase and not 'an ability', and similarly, only certain members of the Adamantoise family would be 'valid' or interesting if they were converted to PvX content of the type one sees in Dominion bosses or would see in Ashes of Creation.
But that's just a Theory.
One of the most enduring 'fantasies' of the human spirit, is to either always have people willing to help... or to be strong enough to never need any.
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Comments
HK's (both) bosses have very understandable, visible and perceivable phases, with different abilities (usually just added to the pool) in each phase. And if there's several versions of the same boss - they build on the previous versions with even more new abilities (last boss being the biggest example of this).
And I forget if og HK had it this way, but Silksong's bosses do a yell when they transfer into a new phase and quite often a knockdown mechanic is close to that change, and it's time placement (before or after phase change) depends on how much dps you're doing.
Iirc Cuphead was pretty much the same way, so I'd imagine majority of games have this and I simply haven't played too many of them.