Open world raids

With 80% of the raids being open world how will you prevent more then 40 people from doing a raid and trivializing its difficulty? I wouldn't mind some mechanic where the first group who tags it is the only one that can damage the boss, but I feel if the bosses are tuned for 40 players and the raids are open world. What would prevent a guild from taking say 48 players instead and making the raid super easy. Or at worst case them being just farmed areas where 80 or 100 players kill the bosses in 30 seconds as soon as it spawns. I don't mind the idea of pvp inside the raids, having to defend from other groups as well perhaps, although I don't like the idea of raids just being completely trivial.

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Leiloni

He answered that in an interview I was watching the other day. Basically he says they're going to design mechanics that can't be zerged through and that people need to know and complete successfully to down the boss.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LUJugtqTBxw&feature=youtu.be&t=24m17s

akatosh

Hmm, that would cover some open world bosses, but as far as i know raids are designed around 40 players, it would still end up becoming the meta to bring as many people as possible, unless the mechanics explicitly required there being only 40 people.

Aardvark

akatosh wrote: »

Hmm, that would cover some open world bosses, but as far as i know raids are designed around 40 players, it would still end up becoming the meta to bring as many people as possible, unless the mechanics explicitly required there being only 40 people.

I forgot which boss it was but wow had a boss that the more people near it the stronger it got. They used to drag it to cities which pretty much required a gm to get rid of due to every person making it stronger.

akatosh

A lot of games have that, a form of scaling, like wow, etc But Steven said he wanted raids to have fixed group sizes, and didn't want scaling in his game.

Songcaller

akatosh wrote: »

A lot of games have that, a form of scaling, like wow, etc But Steven said he wanted raids to have fixed group sizes, and didn't want scaling in his game.

I believe that was scaling where the Raids would scale to Levels etc, IS have stated Raids will be dynamic (or aim to be) where subsequent Bosses will be determined by the previous Boss Encounter in terms of threat/danger etc. Which is a kind of Scaling.

akatosh

yeah, but he explicitly states that raids would be balanced towards specific group sizes, which if you brought more then what it was balanced for, it would end up trivializing the raid.

Aardvark

akatosh wrote: »

yeah, but he explicitly states that raids would be balanced towards specific group sizes, which if you brought more then what it was balanced for, it would end up trivializing the raid.

Trust me the whole open world non instanced raids has a pile of issues that need to be addressed

Leiloni

akatosh wrote: »

yeah, but he explicitly states that raids would be balanced towards specific group sizes, which if you brought more then what it was balanced for, it would end up trivializing the raid.

He answers that in the video I linked - they're going to use fight mechanics to ensure you can't zerg a boss and still need to actually perform boss mechanics correctly to down a boss. So even if you have 80 players, you'd still need to understand the fight to make sure you completed it. But it is open world regardless so you're going to risk having more than 40 people show up and you can't prevent that, so they're going to ensure that regardless of raid size, skill will still be required and more will not equal easier or faster fights.

akatosh

Yeah I just wanted to get this possible issue more known so that we could get an answer from steven. They did say they would have anti zerg mechanics, but I want to know what they are, because even bringing a few more people then what the raid is balanced too can make the raid easier, and will just become the norm, even if those few extra people don't get loot, nothing is soul bound so guilds can just redistribute gear afterward.

Songcaller

akatosh wrote: »

yeah, but he explicitly states that raids would be balanced towards specific group sizes, which if you brought more then what it was balanced for, it would end up trivializing the raid.

I do not understand the position of IS then, how can one limit a Raid to 40 People when another 40 People can come in and out DPS you or fight you for the Boss? I imagine there is a contradiction of terms or practices and won't be able to assess it until I test the game or see these mechanics in action.

Leiloni

Neurath wrote: »

IS have stated Raids will be dynamic (or aim to be) where subsequent Bosses will be determined by the previous Boss Encounter in terms of threat/danger etc. Which is a kind of Scaling.

Yea I'm wondering how that's even going to work from a technical standpoint...?

akatosh

we will have to see, I dont see how they can make it so that bringing more then 40 people will not be beneficial, and make the fight faster or easier, because ultimately more people means more damage, healing, or tanking, and the less a death matters, unless they explicitly put mechanics that kill people outside of the group, or prevent them from doing damage to the boss.

Songcaller

Yeah I understand the theories mate, I just don't understand where we are at.

How can you make subsequent Bosses more difficult based on previous bosses in an Open Environment?

How can you prevent a second Raid Group entering a Boss Area in an Open Environment without wiping both Raids Present?

How can two Raids compete for a Raid Boss if the Raid Boss has mechanics to prevent the two Raids from being in the same sphere of combat?

How can one Raid do 40% Damage Based on the Tag but a second Raid can do 60% Damage without a Tag and receive the loot?

How can you limit an encounter to 40 Man in an Open Environment unless you remove points of contestation?

The simple answer would be that some of these practices relate to Open Raids and some related to Instanced Raids...otherwise I'm completely stumped.

akatosh

Yeah these are questions that need to be answered, hopefully Steven will answer them sometime, we will likely know more come alpha 2 or beta, but we will need to see.

Lethality

Are you familiar with certain Green Dragons in vanilla WoW?

akatosh

I know what they are but I don't know much about them

Niraada

I can't remember if a WoW boss had this particular mechanic, but you could make a boss radiate a dot effect that scales in damage based on the number of people affected by it. As more people try to pile in, the dot becomes unmanageable and people die.

Now, if you were part of a group trying to steal a boss, you could use sacrificial pawns to trigger the dot scaling while focusing down enemy healers, and once the original raid group is dead, your raid moves in and picks up the boss. Easy peasy.

You can do the same thing with spawned adds, where they become more powerful and numerous based on the number of challengers within the boss' zone of influence, and those are all extremely simplistic anti-zerg mechanisms.

Things could be made more complex and challenging by say, reducing healing effectiveness within the boss' ZOI based on the number of people within a certain distance, or having the boss gain additional stats based on overall damage inflicted while leveraging AOE or environmental damage sources.

Even something as simple as "Boss drains n% of hp & mp of anyone within 100m every n. After draining x HP & MP, boss will use its ultimate, necessitating the use of mitigation and survival cooldowns across the raid. If the boss can then instantly do that again because too many people are close by, and all of a sudden it becomes unkillable.

As for making subsequent bosses more difficult based on how quickly a previous boss was killed, I mean, that's not that hard. Boss A sets a flag with its TTK when it dies. Boss B stats, skill costs/cooldowns, or mechanic flags are adjusted based on FlagA. Boss B sets a flag with its TTK when it dies. Boss C has adjustments made based on Flag A and Flag B.

akatosh

Those sound grand as long as their balanced for 40 players being the best amount to take, although I want to hear what their actually going with, because as far as I know I haven't heard any specifics on what their going with.

Niraada

akatosh wrote: »

Those sound grand as long as their balanced for 40 players being the best amount to take, although I want to hear what their actually going with, because as far as I know I haven't heard any specifics on what their going with.

We're in pre-alpha. The specifics you're asking for simply don't exist. o.o

Yet.

akatosh

We do have specifics for a lot of things like this. Although I feel like giving feedback after something is out, or later is less useful then before its implemented. I like to give feedback and pushing what I think needs fixing, rather then just saying, oh wait till alpha, or beta, etc

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