Boss Mechanics (Suggestion)

I was thinking about some previous MMORPGs that I’ve played and I realized that while many of them have interesting boss mechanics, not a lot of them incorporate jumping into their mechanics.

It would be cool to have some mechanics where players are required to jump. An example would be something as simple as the boss sending a shockwave (or multiple shockwaves at regular or irregular intervals) that players would have to jump over. Another example would be to incorporate jumping puzzles (probably not too difficult ones, but that’s up for testing) so that players have to continue moving. This could be done in phases such as the battleground starting to collapse and the players having to jump from falling platform to falling platform until they make it to the next phase. Once again, the speed of this jumping puzzle could be altered based on testing results.

I just think it would be cool to have boss mechanics also test a player’s movement dexterity.

Thoughts?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

xlangatangx

Adding an element of platforming to an MMO? Sign me up! Give me a 'disappearing floor' or 'floor is lava' theme while we are at it to add some intensity. If you're going to make me watch my step and timing, go all out! The only problem with 'timing' mechanics is the latency variable.

Would be cool to test other mechanics or even have class-specific dungeons.

Action targeting: A boss splits into 100 floating shards that can't be tabbed. You can only damage the shards with action abilities.

Healing: Mere mortals cannot harm the immense god-like creatures that populate a dungeon. Fighting them leads to instant death as they crush you in a single blow. Healers however seem to be rather effective on them. Your mission is to follow an AI party of god-like NPCs as they try to clear out the dungeon of other god-like NPCs by healing them, their pets, and other healy/buffy related things. Be careful of the enemy AoE though!

Crafting: Gelatenous cube contains a variety of crafting materials inside. As it moves around and as you attack it, it drops the materials required to defeat it. The smith needs to make the weapon that it's vulnerable to, the enchanter uses dusts to strengthen the weapon, the alchemist creates potions/poisons to apply buffs or debuffs. You get the picture...

Dashing: Let's give one to the melee people too! The Gauntlet - A dungeon of nothing but traps. You must dash past obstacles/traps consisting of swinging axes, spike pits, from timers and pressure plates (you know the type)... The more you loot from the dungeon, the slower you dash. Indiana Jones your way to victory

Damokles

xlangatangx wrote: »

Adding an element of platforming to an MMO? Sign me up! Give me a 'disappearing floor' or 'floor is lava' theme while we are at it to add some intensity. If you're going to make me watch my step and timing, go all out! The only problem with 'timing' mechanics is the latency variable.

Would be cool to test other mechanics or even have class-specific dungeons.

Action targeting: A boss splits into 100 floating shards that can't be tabbed. You can only damage the shards with action abilities.

Healing: Mere mortals cannot harm the immense god-like creatures that populate a dungeon. Fighting them leads to instant death as they crush you in a single blow. Healers however seem to be rather effective on them. Your mission is to follow an AI party of god-like NPCs as they try to clear out the dungeon of other god-like NPCs by healing them, their pets, and other healy/buffy related things. Be careful of the enemy AoE though!

Crafting: Gelatenous cube contains a variety of crafting materials inside. As it moves around and as you attack it, it drops the materials required to defeat it. The smith needs to make the weapon that it's vulnerable to, the enchanter uses dusts to strengthen the weapon, the alchemist creates potions/poisons to apply buffs or debuffs. You get the picture...

Dashing: Let's give one to the melee people too! The Gauntlet - A dungeon of nothing but traps. You must dash past obstacles/traps consisting of swinging axes, spike pits, from timers and pressure plates (you know the type)... The more you loot from the dungeon, the slower you dash. Indiana Jones your way to victory

Oh my god, a floor is lava boss would be awesome! XD
There is also another type of gauntlet: the infinitely spawning enemies.
Imagine a challenge dungeon for players of every level.
A round chamber deep in a mountain, 8 challengers enter, a crystal floats in the middle.
"ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?!", asks the crystal.
They start, the doors snap shut and portals start spewing out weak monsters all around them.
Round 1 has begun.
At first its weak monsters, wolves mostly with some bears thrown in for fun. Between each round are 30sec to regroup.
Round 10.
A giant bear boss at lvl 10 spawns.
Round 11 starts.
Stronger monsters start popping out, the monster number increases.
Round 50.
Elite lvl 50 enemies are normal now.
Round 60, lvl 50 boss monsters are everywere the eye can see.

Our elite team gets wiped in round 61.
They open the chest and each gets either an epic crafting material or something of equal value.
"Same thing next week guys?" ... "Shure!"

Wandering Mist

Platforming in an mmorpg is one of those things that sounds great in theory but doesn't really work in practice (play GW2 end-game content for examples of this). In short, it is a nightmare because the game isn't optimised for precision-platforming meaning the controls won't be nearly as tight and responsive as they are in a dedicated platformer like "Super Mario", "Super Meat Boy" or "Ori and the Blind Forest". On top of that you have to factor in latency and false-inputs that are common in most online games, making the experience even worse. Anyone who has played "Super Mario Maker 2" online multiplayer knows what I'm talking about.

That's why most mmorpgs don't design fights in such a way. If they do put in jumping mechanics it will usually be very mild or will be handled by a single ability that automatically moves your character for you from one set location to another.

VmanGman

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Platforming in an mmorpg is one of those things that sounds great in theory but doesn't really work in practice (play GW2 end-game content for examples of this). In short, it is a nightmare because the game isn't optimised for precision-platforming meaning the controls won't be nearly as tight and responsive as they are in a dedicated platformer like "Super Mario", "Super Meat Boy" or "Ori and the Blind Forest". On top of that you have to factor in latency and false-inputs that are common in most online games, making the experience even worse. Anyone who has played "Super Mario Maker 2" online multiplayer knows what I'm talking about.

That's why most mmorpgs don't design fights in such a way. If they do put in jumping mechanics it will usually be very mild or will be handled by a single ability that automatically moves your character for you from one set location to another.

That’s absolutely not true. With today’s systems and networks latency is rarely a problem anymore.

Controls can absolutely be tight enough to make this possible. WoW for example has flawless movement that could easily allow for dexterity mechanics like this. GW2 is a bad example imo because its movement is not as fluid.

Not to mention that that platforming isn’t the only way to engage in movement dexterity mechanics. The shockwave mechanic I talked about is a great example of this.

By your logic fast paced PvP shouldn’t be a thing either because of latency...

Ishka

Well, this is just a "joke idea", if you want some "jump & dexterity fights", I think having fights similar to Shadow of the Colossus would be quite fun, imagine a full raid escalating a giant monster, trying to destroy its weak points. Would look like some gang of cockroaches attacking some unlucky human xD.

It could be quite interesting for some classes to actually be able to jump onto giant monsters, if I remember correctly, when I played PSO2 in the japanese-version some years ago, we had bosses we could jump onto.

Having too much players crawling on the skin of a giant would break the epicness Shadow of the Colossus gave, but giving this opportunities to some classes would be quite fun, time for these dudes to become heroes !

So a "legit idea" (in my eyes) would be that we fight a boss that takes place in a dungeon, some ancient magicals ruins, there is a huge golem in the center of some huge room, with some stairs on the walls spiralling up to the the top of the room. By going up you find some levers that activate some platforms, the party members have to cooperate by activating the lever at the right timing, if not it could be disastrous. These platforms are used to access weak points of the boss for a short moment, to hit its weak points. What do you guys think ? XD

VmanGman

Ishka wrote: »

Well, this is just a "joke idea", if you want some "jump & dexterity fights", I think having fights similar to Shadow of the Colossus would be quite fun, imagine a full raid escalating a giant monster, trying to destroy its weak points. Would look like some gang of cockroaches attacking some unlucky human xD.

It could be quite interesting for some classes to actually be able to jump onto giant monsters, if I remember correctly, when I played PSO2 in the japanese-version some years ago, we had bosses we could jump onto.

Having too much players crawling on the skin of a giant would break the epicness Shadow of the Colossus gave, but giving this opportunities to some classes would be quite fun, time for these dudes to become heroes !

So a "legit idea" (in my eyes) would be that we fight a boss that takes place in a dungeon, some ancient magicals ruins, there is a huge golem in the center of some huge room, with some stairs on the walls spiralling up to the the top of the room. By going up you find some levers that activate some platforms, the party members have to cooperate by activating the lever at the right timing, if not it could be disastrous. These platforms are used to access weak points of the boss for a short moment, to hit its weak points. What do you guys think ? XD

Those are all cool ideas for mechanics, but I was more so referring to movement specific mechanics.

Usually in MMOs players kind of stand there and use their abilities until some boss mechanic requires them to move.

My point was that as they’re fighting and shooting abilities, the boss could for example send shockwaves that the players would need to jump over. This way players don’t just simply stand there and shoot, but would instead have to be more active throughout the fight.

The shockwaves are just one of the examples I thought of, but I’m sure a variety of other mechanics could also work for this purpose.

Wandering Mist

vmangman wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Platforming in an mmorpg is one of those things that sounds great in theory but doesn't really work in practice (play GW2 end-game content for examples of this). In short, it is a nightmare because the game isn't optimised for precision-platforming meaning the controls won't be nearly as tight and responsive as they are in a dedicated platformer like "Super Mario", "Super Meat Boy" or "Ori and the Blind Forest". On top of that you have to factor in latency and false-inputs that are common in most online games, making the experience even worse. Anyone who has played "Super Mario Maker 2" online multiplayer knows what I'm talking about.

That's why most mmorpgs don't design fights in such a way. If they do put in jumping mechanics it will usually be very mild or will be handled by a single ability that automatically moves your character for you from one set location to another.

That’s absolutely not true. With today’s systems and networks latency is rarely a problem anymore.

Controls can absolutely be tight enough to make this possible. WoW for example has flawless movement that could easily allow for dexterity mechanics like this. GW2 is a bad example imo because its movement is not as fluid.

Not to mention that that platforming isn’t the only way to engage in movement dexterity mechanics. The shockwave mechanic I talked about is a great example of this.

By your logic fast paced PvP shouldn’t be a thing either because of latency...

Try to do precision platforming with 100+ms and then get back to me on that, and if you believe that people won't be playing with that high ping then you are very naive. Even jumping over a simple shockwave can prove troublesome depending on the latency involved. Regardless, it's not just about the latency but the animations. Mmorpgs are designed around combat, NOT platforming, and animations play a huge part in that. The jumping animations in WoW are quite a bit slower than they are in Super Mario Odyssey for example, not to mention that jumping in WoW works very differently to any 3d platformer. Blizzard makes up for this by being very very generous with their collision hitboxes which is why often times your character looks like they are standing in thin air next to an object rather than on top of it.

Faster animations typically result in more responsive-feeling gameplay, which is why characters in a fighting game like Street Fighter V feel more responsive than characters do in WoW.

EDIT: Now I totally get what you are asking for here. You don't want players to just stand there firing off spells, then move 2 steps to the right to dodge an attack and then fire off even more spells. Making players move is a core component of engaging fight design. But at the same time you need to think about whether what you are asking players to do is in line with how the rest of the gameplay works.

unknownsystemerror

You want to see how platforming works in a mmo raid look at SWTOR Eternity Vault footage. If a game 9 years old can do it, sure they can figure it out now.

Undead Canuck

Try playing from Australia... Notorious for bad latency.

xlangatangx

Damokles wrote: »

Oh my god, a floor is lava boss would be awesome! XD
There is also another type of gauntlet: the infinitely spawning enemies.
Imagine a challenge dungeon for players of every level.
A round chamber deep in a mountain, 8 challengers enter, a crystal floats in the middle.
"ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?!", asks the crystal.
They start, the doors snap shut and portals start spewing out weak monsters all around them.
Round 1 has begun.
At first its weak monsters, wolves mostly with some bears thrown in for fun. Between each round are 30sec to regroup.
Round 10.
A giant bear boss at lvl 10 spawns.
Round 11 starts.
Stronger monsters start popping out, the monster number increases.
Round 50.
Elite lvl 50 enemies are normal now.
Round 60, lvl 50 boss monsters are everywere the eye can see.

Our elite team gets wiped in round 61.
They open the chest and each gets either an epic crafting material or something of equal value.
"Same thing next week guys?" ... "Shure!"

When does development start?

Gimlog

A 3 phases boss where the second one is a chasing phase with the opportunity to deal damages, if ×% damages are deal you get a third bis phase.

During the chasing phase there could be different way to go through with different difficulty
( platform, projectiles avoiding ect)
More you take risk more you have excess to his week points.

Stuff like this could be fun.

Wandering Mist

Gimlog wrote: »

A 3 phases boss where the second one is a chasing phase with the opportunity to deal damages, if ×% damages are deal you get a third bis phase.

During the chasing phase there could be different way to go through with different difficulty
( platform, projectiles avoiding ect)
More you take risk more you have excess to his week points.

Stuff like this could be fun.

One thing to keep in mind (as a side note) is that high mobility fights might well favour some classes more than others. Practically this means that if you put too much required mobility in a boss fight you may deny some classes from even taking part.

Gimlog

Well you could favour some classes in phases 2 and favour the others in phase 3 bis and so on.

I personally imagine this second phases with different layer where may be the more mobile class have advantages but take more risks.

I would enjoin if phases 2 as different way to succeed it and each favour a class but the phase 3 bis corresponding at the way the group has choose to clean P2 will be designed in such way that this favour class as to perfectly play or the whole group will be wipeout.

Plateau

I like dungeons and bosses that give you an extra ability to play with. Things like a special shield for blocking some attacks, or a jetpack to fly between platforms, or a paint brush for marking different spots for various mechanics.

Some people might think vehicles or quick-time events are gimmicky and dumb, since they remove your normal abilities and interrupt the normal flow of combat. But I think they can be cool if they're made really well, especially as a phase transition. It's lame if you spend most of the fight in a vehicle, because it's never as fun or interesting as normal combat mechanics and class kits. But as a short transition phase, it can provide a break between hectic combat phases, while also giving players something unique to do.

Ventharien

Jump mechanics would be fine. as long as the boss had a telegraphed move, or charge bar. WoW, SWTOR, FF, and others have had us running out of fire, staying out of the lava, watching directions, running, staying still,staying near to something, or someone, and really everything under the sun. I don't think there's really any impossible setup from a technical aspect. I'd love to see more mobile boss environments, not just a follow down a hallway after phase one, but maybe having a raised section where it would be beneficial for ranged characters to set up, while having some risk along with that benefit. Creature spawn or the platform can crumble Etc.

Ventharien

Wandering Mist wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind (as a side note) is that high mobility fights might well favour some classes more than others. Practically this means that if you put too much required mobility in a boss fight you may deny some classes from even taking part.

I'd agree that they would have to be careful about going to heavy into a single mechanic, but this would also be an awesome way for certain classes to have their moment to shine, maybe to up the dps of the raid/ party.

Noaani

Ventharien wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind (as a side note) is that high mobility fights might well favour some classes more than others. Practically this means that if you put too much required mobility in a boss fight you may deny some classes from even taking part.

I'd agree that they would have to be careful about going to heavy into a single mechanic, but this would also be an awesome way for certain classes to have their moment to shine, maybe to up the dps of the raid/ party.

Agreed.

One of the core aspects of a well designed multi-boss raid zone is that there needs to be encounters where different classes shine.

This does mean that the mechanics will force some classes to be less useful than they otherwise would, but as long as it is balanced out over a zone, everyone has their place.

ataulfos

What I would really like to see if it can be implemented at some time later in any update are the world titans who have different mechanics such as scaling and hitting them from a certain point such as shadow colossus or kratos in order to see an additional scaling who would be the world leaders to battle with siege weapons and give some more variety and epic story telling

ferretstalker

SWTOR had one raid boss that required your party to drop down falling platforms to reach the boss's second phase. Each platform was being destroyed, and jumping to another platform caused fall damage, so medics had to time their heals to keep the party alive while jumping down from spot to spot. It was erratic and fun.

bloodprophet

The SOA boss fight SWTOR was a lot of fun. At launch some of the platforms on drop down would not stop at the next level and you would have know where to go. The last drop wasn't so bad if you had good healers and gear . The top ones would bone the raid and you had to restart. Was a lot of fun.

I think it would be interesting if there was a skill pool (say 30 or so possible)for the dungeon and bosses on spawn would get 5 or 6 random skills from the pool so you never know what the boss will do each time you face them. Of course there has to be limits. If it is a weapon attack the boss needs a weapon and Troll can't get the dragon breath attack. Most of have a good story of a boss fight where everything went wrong and won anyway through the scramble. We remember those as the best fights not the ones that were simply repetitive face roll tank and spank.

Kragga's Palace is a good example. We got through the raid to Kragga and raid time was up. Being first time in there we decided go for it and see the fight and we will come back later and redo it. Through the scramble we downed him on the first try with 2 of 8 players left. The rare 2 seat mount dropped as well. Was fun as healer and 1 melee dps running and trying not to die.

Child Item