So, I'm a raider in Final Fantasy 14. I don't do the "Savage" or "Ultimate" content, which is designed for the highest of the high in terms of players, but I do enjoy the high-end raids that the game consistently puts out. The fact that it relies on mechanical complexity taught to you through a huge number of dungeon bosses and prior experience, to the point where any new raid coming out has a library of things you can refer to in terms of mechanics for how you're supposed to respond to them, because you've seen it all before, it's just responding to them in rapid succession that's difficult. That's pretty engaging to me, and it shows an interesting design philosophy that's made raiding in the game a lot of fun.
They had a rocky start with it, though. This video is kind of long, but goes over all the stuff that's relevant to this conversation from the perspective of Final Fantasy 14, and I feel it's something relatively important to learn from for high-end content in this game. The really important stuff is before the 15 minute mark, as it goes over the early-installment weirdness[youtube]9U0FGnHMiB4[/youtube]
One thing that raid design for this type of game does is that it restricts team compositions somewhat to make sure you can actually beat the boss. This, while interesting in its own way, can be a problem for a game designed around the concept of free-flowing mechanics like the original City of Heroes was, as it had no real "requirements" for what you play as to complete content. If the devs can maintain a proper balance for that point, or otherwise give different protection and offensive sets different roles entirely (A good example being Super Strength versus Electric Melee in CoH - SS was all about singular, potent and high damage hits, while EM was much lower damage but destroyed an enemy endurance bar, making it hard for them to use any high cost moves), then the integrity of freedom of choice can be preserved, as well as allow them to design raids around different sorts of team compositions.
Food for thought. What do you think of raid-level encounters? Got any other games you feel we should learn from going forward?
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I think in a game like CoT, raids should not reach the same level of difficulty Savage has in FFXIV just due to it being nearly impossible to balance it to be fun and inclusive with this much character freedom. However the difficulty of the 24 man raids and 8 man normal mode raids and trials seems just right. Very puggable yet challenging enough to make you pay attention to whats going on. Still plenty of mechanics enough to keep it interesting.
City of Heroes got around the needing to balance the raids that appeared at the end of the game by basically making them longer harder and more story driven Missions. It could be balanced just like the rest of the game just took a bit longer to complete due to the extra enemies or how health spongy the bosses were.
That's a huge game design flaw though, "Difficulty" through HP sacks. That really should be avoided. Mechanics create fun difficulty, not raw HP and resistances.
That depends, really. High health can be interesting, contingent on there being a reason for it - for instance, if you can blast through the difficulty of a given boss so fast that you entirely bypass one of its phases, thereby lowering the mechanical complexity of an encounter purely by being glass cannons. As with the vast majority of things, there's a critical balance point that has to be achieved.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I'm not saying high health is bad, just that it's NEVER a substitute for real gameplay mechanics. Blue seemed to be saying COH got around the need for mechanics by using high health which if they really did would be really bad, and boring too.
I play FFXIV as well and some of those bosses really do have tons of health especially on release when dps isnt super high in comparison.
But JUST HP is going to mean you sit there mindlessly hitting the boss till it falls over. there must be enough mechanics to keep it engaging.
That's very true. It's always easier later, but O11 was a nasty mess purely because of that ridiculous Starboard/Larboard thing, as well as the boss just having way too damn much HP. Actually killing the bastard was really difficult even when you had the mechanics down because you had to stay consistently good for 16 minutes, versus most bosses being around 10 or 11 minutes with more breather moments.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
There were mechanics i admittedly had not run the raids that often since i was in college at the time they came out but if i remeber right one of them involved needing to gather buffs from the edges of the arena to launch missles at one of the bosses so everyone could actualy hit him.
I liked o11, starboard/larboard is only difficult because people aren't familiar with the terms. I would have preferred if they used "Left" and "Right" but the fight is fun and vastly preferable to any boss in say, Champions Online with their stupid massive regen "mechanics" and almost nothing else.
I think I prefer the mechanics in o9 and o12 though. Working on o9s right now with my group and I like that as well. although the "Lat/Long" implosions having no aoe splat on savage confused me at first like starboard larboard did the rest is fairly straightforward.
That's really not one of the most liked mechanics and that "Castrum meridianum" can hardly be called a raid at least these days. The early ARR stuff tended to be much lower in quality. You should do some research into how the newer stuff is done.
Oh were you talking about COH or FFXIV, becuase castrum meridianum basically does the same thing. Mighta been more fun back in ARR when item level was lower I dunno but its definitely boring now.
Reason I hate that kinda mechanic is I want to FIGHT THE BOSS. I dont want to do busy work to make the boss fightable.
I was talking CoH mostly because I think CoT will run into the same balancing hiccups for raids that CoH had where you cant focus on trying to make a core required team of Healing Dps and Tanking due to the nature of the power sets.
https://youtu.be/Ilsp81hrHBw
I found a vid of one of them, not the one i was talking about though.
Mechanics really don't HAVE to be focused around trinity roles. it does make it easier, but it's not required. Any mechanic in trinity games which targets any role is going to be viable for a non role focused game. stack markers, spread markers, things like debuff management or positioning (Dun Scaith first boss or Exdeath) would work fine.
Something I mentioned a little bit ago that's actually relevant to this whole topic is how FF14 has "Breather" moments in its fights. For instance, in the fight against King Thordan? After you beat the knights of the round, there's a full 30 second break where you've got nothing going on except Thordan himself giving you a massive spectacle. This gives you and your team an opportunity to calm down, lets your brains reboot after how long and tough the fight against the knights had been, gives you something visually appealing to enjoy, lets mana and TP come back, cooldowns on skills process...
There's actually a lot of good things to this, because it lets your brain cool off enough to enjoy how awesome the music and the scenario you're fighting in is, rather than be forced to just keep responding, never giving you a moment to think and process. That's almost as important as the mechanics themselves.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Yeah boss transitions are not only fine but a good thing when done right. o11 actually has this in the form of the "Epilepsy" Delta Attack phase but it's not as well done as in Thordan. What i don't like is bosses going immune requiring you to perform some complex action to make them fightable again. I should be doing mechanics while engaging with the boss.
One way to make content more engaging is to include gameplay that goes beyond the normal "click enemy, click win button" affair that most MMO combat is.
Raid difficulty usually comes not simply from the raw stats or numbers of the encounter, but the amount of players involved and the relatively unique gameplay mechanics. The epitome of this is the old "don't stand in the killzone" style stuff, but it can be far more involved.
The thing is, you can absolutely have A. more engaging combat and B. more engaging mission and fight mechanics without needing the baggage associated with raids (huge numbers of people and long sloggy HP sack boss fights and tons of trash clearing).
So from a design perspective it isn't about designing for "raids". That is an outdated concept that is associated with poopsocking players. Interesting content doesn't need to be limited to higher levels or bigger groups. It is about designing for more casual content that people can do to relax versus more engaging content that requires players to be on the ball. Think about it that way. A game can easily have both. Missions designed to be engaging can even be marked as dangerous (or heroic, epic, whatever word you want) in the quest interface, perhaps with an associated warning from the quest giver.
That doesn't mean that the mission involves max level baddies and requires 50 players. It just means that anyone doing the content will have perform well and be able to think on their feet and learn new gameplay. Perhaps there will be cerebral puzzles and riddles they have to solve on a timer before the walls crush them or the room fills with poison. Perhaps they need to do some platforming to jump from place to place during a fight. It could be as simple as the old "don't stand in the fire" bit during a boss fight.
There is no reason we can't have interesting content even at low levels. Certainly you want the first bit players encounter to be relatively simple and let them learn by doing, but that phase of gameplay doesn't need to be longer than a few minutes.
There are reasons people have fond memories of CoH content like frostfire. It had some interesting unique mechanics and was early enough everyone could see it, and without needing to sign up with 50 people a month in advance.
Raids in FFXIV are largely without the large numbers of people and long sloggy boss fights you mention. Boss fights will last at most around 12 minutes before you either win or fail. and most raids are designed for 8 people, any raid for more than that will be designed with pugs in mind only. this is why I hold it as a good example.
You also do modern MMO Combat a HUGE disservice by describing it as "Click Enemy Click Win button" MMOs have come a LONG way since vanilla WoW (at least ones which arent terrible) and the design has improved immensely.
I think variety is the key.
Maybe instead of designing all raids to assume a certain team composition such as tank-healer-DPS, we should explore raids that toss traditional raids out the window. What if there was a raid that had enemies that ignored efforts to tank them, thus stressing the need for support characters that can mitigate the damage the enemies cause. Maybe there will be raids that somehow make healing and damage mitigation fruitless, thus stressing the need for DPS and Control heroes to step in and nuke the enemies before they in turn nuke us.
Do away with the holy trinity of MMO parties and explore raids that stress entirely different team compositions from one raid to the next.
Maybe even include raids that require the party to split up and tackle different bosses in different areas at the same time. Each boss requiring entirely different types of heroes and/or villains to take them down.
Why not combine all of those? Except the splitting up I've always found that bad since EVERYONE wants to fight the big bad anyway. But don't overuse any of those mechanics you mentioned becuase if you do players will quickly get sick of stuff like that.
If you make tanking an enemy useless nobody will want tanky type characters in their group for it. What of those heroes who have that as their concept? making enemies ignore mitigation also nullifies the point of having it.
There are other raids no? Why must every raid cater to every play style?
on the other hand, avoiding raid mechanics that focus explicitly on the tank seems wise. For instance, Exdeath, as was mentioned before, can hit the area around him as an AoE that you have to predict. that goes for everybody with melee attacks rather than just the tank.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Becuase players want to be useful in all content and this is not an unreasonable request. If I want the rewards or want to play a certain content, I should be able to do well in it if I am skilled enough regardless of what my playstyle is.
Content normally also has rewards specific to that content. A player should not feel locked out of doing something in a game becuase they chose the "Wrong" kind of character for it.
Let me put this a different way. if you make a raid or some content where a certain playstyle is useless, then you're essentially giving the finger to those people by releasing it, and catering only to everyone ELSE. games need to support the playstyles which are in the game, so if a game for instance has crowd control powers, the game needs to make crowd control useful in all content, not neccesarily on all enemies but in all content useful in some way.
I think it would be perfectly acceptable to have a toolkit available for the raid bosses. And depending on the composition of the party, different tools become available to the bosses from that toolkit. Not only does this make the raid different and fresh for every different team composition, but it also allows it to be more difficult because it doesn't have to make allowances for a team composition that isn't present.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I like this idea its actually really neat. Make bosses adapt to the kind of team fighting them.
I still don't really see the problem since this game is pro-alting anyways. It's not like I'm advocating for all raids to suddenly be anti-tank.
I'm just advocating for something more interesting than the same old shit EVERY MMO does. Tank, Healer, a handful of damage dealers, and suddenly all of life's problems are solved.
It doesn't work that way in comics. Not every Hero is suited for every problem. I wouldn't expect Spiderman to fight a Kraken in the middle of the Ocean and I wouldn't expect Aquaman to fight a monster literally made of fire in the middle of a desert.
Being a PvPer, I'm quite accustomed to games not catering to my playstyle at all, so I don't really feel sympathy for someone who can't do one thing in a game full of other content they can do.
Here is a fun scenario idea...
Doctor Tyche has made another giant robot that is now rampaging through the city towards City Hall. The Robot ignores most control effects including taunts and attempts to aggro it. It single mindedly marches its way towards City Hall. However, Doctor Tyche is controlling it from some vantage point in the city. To slow the Robot down, the Tank could go find him and distract him. The Robot then either halts while Tyche is distracted allowing the DPSers to focus fire the robot while it's not resisting. Tyche eventually teleports himself to a safe, new vantage point and begins his robot's march yet again, requiring the Tank to track his new vantage point down and distract him yet again. Rinse and repeat until the Robot is finally distroyed by the team of DPSers focusing on the robot.
This would make all roles happy while also mixing things up by forcing the party to split to some degree to deal with the two opponents.
That's good for YOU. however game design does not work that way. successful games have to cater to a larger audience and that INCLUDES making the people who just like playing ONE character happy. I do want something more interesting than lame trinity gameplay but i'm ok with roles, I just want more variation in the roles. Like City of Heroes did with defenders and corruptors. they were support but not just healers or buffers. they could do good damage too and even "tank" by buffing themselves
I'd be happy with 6-8 roles that players could choose to combine 2 or 3 of.
Okay... so long as the game caters to everyone but me, it's okay? Fuck off.
I don't understand, are you saying the only way to make a game cater to you is by designing it to screw over other playstyles? I just want the game to be good for everyone.
I don't have anything against your playstyle either unless it requires designing the game in such a way that others including myself would find terrible.
Can you clarify if you're against roles period? becuase roles are always going to be a thing even if the only role is DPS. but JUST dps is boring too, wheres the crowd control or buffs?
Roles are practically a necessity, but there needn't be only 3 narrowly defined ones.
My main point in my post was that there is no reason "raid" (engaging and less relaxed) content has to be limited to high levels or large groups. I agree with the OP that interesting content is important and learning from other games is crucial.
I'm aware game design has advanced since the days of everquest and vanilla wow. Old CoH wasn't far off of that style of combat, though, and CoT is heavily borrowing from CoX.
We haven't really seen much in terms of combat, boss fights, special events, and story missions so we have no idea what we'll be getting.
Honestly if CoT doesn't learn from the mistakes of past games it won't succeed in today's market.
You don't understand? I find that kind of hard to believe, since it's basically your own argument flipped against you.
Okay, so we got tanks, supports, DPSers and Controllers. You want every raid to cater to them, but I have yet to find a raid in any game that really scratches an itch for those of us who find that boring. Every raid boils down to the same experience for me. My DPSer being shielded by a tank while a healer keeps that tank alive and I sit there and hit the same cycle of buttons on repeat until the fight is over. I want fights that break that mold entirely. Maybe I want to feel the danger of taking on enemies with no tank able to shield me. Maybe I want to fight an enemy that no matter how hard I blast it, it won't go down, forcing me to think of other strategies to at least mitigate the havoc it causes, like turning my attention to rescuing civilians in the area or performing some ritual to banish the unkillable monstrosity away.
I'm the type of person who can't do the same raid or dungeon or what have you more than once or twice, because they are so railroaded and easy to predict that I lose interest after learning the story within. And god forbid I do something outside the cookie cutter way of handling the instance! It's why I prefer PvP. People take a little longer to figure out than the scripted NPCs. Sometimes a person can even surprise me after months of feeling like I've seen every possible outcome of a PvP scenario.
Catering to everyone means that everything must be made roughly the same in the end. There is only so much you can do when you have to include every role in a game ALL the time. Mix it up a bit. Get players to explore new ways to play their role or get them to discover new roles to them entirely. I once made a Fire Mage in WoW and managed to tank several times with it. My group got to experience tackling instances without a proper tank and they admitted it was one of the most thrilling experiences they've had in the game. For a cloth wearing glass cannon, I proved pretty effective at managing aggro and staying alive just long enough to win the fight. This was back in WotLK days.
In short, I'm bored of MMOs. They devolve into the same grey mass of sameness eventually. I want to see a game toss the whole concept of a raid on its head and reward creative gameplay rather than rewarding the cookie cutter gameplay.
Can you explain how it rewards creative gameplay by making some playstyles worthless? all I can see is that saying "bring everything but these kinds of characters to win" which is not too creative. you can be creative with or without roles. and if you're bored of roles in general and MMOs entirely maybe you should stop playing them? Roles are part of any team game, it just depends what form they take? did you also hate CoH for its approach to roles? I thought that was a good way to do it.
Success is a fine thing to learn from as well!
You're right of course. It is totally fine to be wary, speculate, and generally engage with the devs though. No one knows everything. Knowledge can be lost. Plenty of games have come out that have failed to improve on every aspect of a classic genre changing or defining title. This is especially true with titles that are grand in scope, and MMOs are complicated beasts with many aspects.
Most of the people around these parts are happy to give the devs complete faith, some have concerns, but everyone wants the end result to be the best it can be.
I think white rook's point is the same as mine, they want interesting content and don't want to fall asleep hitting 1-2-3-4 over and over.
Designers that know what players will bring to an encounter can tailor the experience around that, but making content that can be done by anyone is much more difficult.
That being said, there are plenty of ways to make encounters more interesting without requiring specific combat roles. The primary way to do this is by involving mechanics that are not linked directly to combat. This can mean requiring players to move, solve puzzles, interact with the environment, etc.
Gotta be careful that these requirements NOT linked to combat dont stop people from being engaged in combat at the same time. What I mean is things like having to perform some non combat related task to even touch the boss. Would be much better to have to perform some sort of action WHILE engaged in fighting the boss in order to say, prevent the boss from doing something really nasty.
Rewards it by breaking that tired old mold first off. Bringing certain roles shouldn't be enough to win, there should always be more to it. Hell, why should every raid even be "winnable"? Don't heroes and villains lose pretty frequently? Why not have a raid that is doomed to "failure", but have that failure be a prerequisite to opening the followup raid that continues the story after the initial defeat? Like your typically Rocky story.
I may be bored of MMOs, but where else am I able to find large, open worlds, and masses of people to interact with? I Still find some enjoyment out of the PvP side of things and I still enjoy at least the first playthrough of the PvE content usually. What MMOs lack for me is replayability in the end. Some MMOs can't even manage to make the first playthrough interesting enough. The only thing that made SWTOR interesting was the dialogue options changing things up. Otherwise, it was basically WoW PVE content painted over with star wars skins. I hope CoT will be interesting and variable enough to make a replay entirely different. Not just in story, but in how you tackle a problem with entirely different team compositions.
Sure, usually you dodge out of the fire but you keep fighting.
Another thing that could spice up combat you mentioned earlier, having breathers in between hectic parts of events.
This fits especially well with the comic book villain monologue trope!
I have to agree with Rook in that as much as I crave a new CoX experience the PvE content is going to have to be vastly more impressive and engaging than the stuff we got in 2004.
The old south park wow joke of "stay in the forest killing boars" isn't going to cut it in 2018+.
If Content isnt "winnable" no one will play said content (unless the actual goal is to survive for as long as you can and are rewarded accordingly). Bringing certain roles is never enough to win in a good modern mmo it takes player skill playing those roles and learning mechanics. But if you make it so certain roles or playstyles literally are usless you're making a huge mistake.
And I agree with this but rook is suggesting a terrible way to make it more interesting.
In CoH, with the right buffs, almost anyone could effectively tank or you didn't need a tank (or healer, or dedicated DPS). If that's what you're looking for, I expect you'll be happy. If it's a new, never before seen MMO experience, then I expect you'll be disappointed.
I certainly am all for approaches that are a little more varied than "find big bag of health, pop big bag of health". However, I'm not going to anticipate that MWM can reinvent the basic computer game experience.
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Guild Wars 2 has no established roles. In effect every character is its own tank, DPS and healer. And let's get one thing straight, City of Heroes was no Guild Wars 2. City of Heroes had very distinct roles and by extension we expect City of Titans will as well. We need look no further than the [url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/updated-classification-and-specification-chart]archetypes[/url]. CoT will have tanks, it will have DPS, both ranged and melee, and it will have support characters of both the crowd control type, the buff/debuff type, and the healing type. But the difference between what CoX and CoT offers and what other games with defined roles offer is that in CoX content is NOT designed with the assumption that all roles will be present in each group. In order to increase difficulty AND make content role-indifferent, it must take more design effort for all the possible contingencies, or just take a whole lot more hitpoints. The latter is what CoX did. I think it is safe to say we're hoping for the more effort solution. (in deference to the limited manpower of the all-volunteer forces, we hope that the more effort is in thinking smarter not working harder,)
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
"Pop big bag of health while doing various other things, some of which are threats to avoid and some of which give you an advantage in the fight" would mean a wide variety of character types can do the content.
Or you know, don't limit interesting encounters just to big boss fights. You can have tense engaging content that doesn't involve a giant boss. Being trapped in a room that closes in to crush you for instance puts the player in a tense environment. Give them a puzzle to solve or challenge to overcome before they run out the clock and get squished. Or a bomb goes off. Or they are sucked into the void between worlds, or whatever other doomclock you want.
Have a challenge that has to be overcome while waves of baddies spawn. As they progress through the challenge the baddies get easier. If they mess up the baddies get harder or they get a debuff etc. Have a goofy encounter where gravity acts weird and bouncing around can be a hazard as well as used to your advantage. Have portals in the fight that can be used in creative ways.
You can have lots of interesting encounters without having a "boss" at all.
I would like it if Melee characters could have one or 2 ranged attacks. they'd of course focus on melee but one or 2 ranged attacks on a melee character adds lots of flavor and personality to the character and allows for more concepts to be made well.
Pick a Ranged Tertiary Set. ;)
And yes I’m tracking this thread :D
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
When I played CoH, I liked to do TFs in the early years because I tended to play Defenders and the TFs meant having a team for like 2 hours and thus getting levels and INF faster than if I had soloed for that same amount of time. I did very few Hamidon raids, but I did a lot of Incarnate trials. The main reason I did the trials wasn't necessarily because of the Incarnate swag, which was nocve, but because it was what other people were doing at night. I grew to like group play, even if it was a large group. You get to say stuff in text channels and other people can actually read it and respond. Its social.
As for difficulty, I mean, it SHOULD require a lot of people if its difficult and it should be difficult if it requires a lot of people. In a game like this, there's the comicbook trope of "one hero can't stop Galactus all by him or her self, so we need to team up."
I'm fine with a "puzzle" aspect to the raid, like you have to defeat the two bosses at the same time, or click the glowwies in a certain order, etc. Its interesting and fun. Likke all things, if you do it like 20 times it generally get's less interesting and fun due to you getting bored with it. I expect that and am ok with it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
so it will work like that? characters can mix melee and ranged? that's good to hear, my favorite character I'd want to recreate is a Carol Danvers inspired flying brick,
so she also shoots energy. (pictured in my current avatar here)
As far as difficult means many players- thats 100% not true. One hero could have trouble stopping their nemesis solo, just as much trouble as 20-40 heroes would have stopping a galactus like foe. Content for one or 2 players should be a thing, of all difficulty levels, as well as 4 player and 8 player+ content.
Well, CoH had "soft" roles - it wasn't quite the hard/strict trinity as seen in other games. Strong buffs/debuffs and controls opened up a lot of possibilities for class combinations; non-tanks could tank to a degree, support characters could still deal some DPS, etc. Didn't have a Tank (melee crowd control) handy? A Controller and/or a buffed Scrapper with the right powers could do the trick in a pinch (bonus points if you have a guy that can -DAM the enemy). No Scrapper or Blaster? A couple support characters that can +DAM and/or -DR can help the rest of the team make up some of the difference. Even the power sets within the classes offered some variety in playstyle - Ice tanks were a little more controller-y while fire tanks were a little more DPS-y.
In any case, I agree that the devs have to take into account that there will be multitude of class combos, and should not assume a certain team "recipe" for any given encounter.
Personally I would eat up small group / solo viable content that is interesting and varied. I say bring on the burning buildings, slowly sinking ships, ticking bombs, magic labyrinths, devious riddles, stealth missions, vehicle and NPC missions, and anything else that helps break up the grind and add variety.
Beating up mooks is tons of fun but you need crescendos and lulls and changes of pace.
Don't forget classic villain encounters designed for 4 or fewer people. a variety of solo content is as important to a good MMO as its team content.
Yup, the Tertiaries are basically going to be trimmed-down versions of secondary power sets (with possibly one or more specialty ones like "Super Senses"). They probably won't be as powerful as secondaries, but they should allow you to shore up some weaknesses or give yourself a little boost in one or two areas, like giving a melee-focused character a couple ranged attack options.
Edit: Or if you really want to mix up ranged and melee you could re-roll your character as a Bastion Stalwart when it becomes available; Protection primary, Assault secondary
Assuming the game scales missions similar to CoX anything from 1-8 players should be doable in the same normal mission content.
Content that is more advanced with timers, puzzles, bosses, or other mechanics can scale just as well. The only real thing that would be affected with multiple players is interacting with multiple parts of the environment at once, but you can either not have those all interactable at once, or have them guarded by enemies that scale with the party.
Anything that is non combat related like a riddle stays the same difficulty regardless of party size I would think.
Potentially if the encounter involves jumping puzzles or other tests of skill it could actually be harder with more players, but those hurdles need not automatically kill players. If they don't having extra players on hand to buff and heal and whatnot can help make up for needing to get those extra bodies through the obstacle courses. Assuming we'll be able to trade inspirations like we could in CoH players will always be able to give each other a hand out of combat.
One of the only examples of this, that I can recall encountering, is navigating the minefield in the Explosive Conflict operation in SWTOR. Definitely not a boss, but a fun little puzzle. Probably a righteous PitA without voice chat, though.
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I really hope respec tokens will be a thing. having to do a whole re roll of a character just becuase you want to change their build would turn me off to the game.
If I'm not mistaken, I do believe respecs will allow you to change the type of secondaries your character can access - so I think you should be able to respec from a Bulwark (/Melee) to a Bastion (/Assault) when it becomes available.
I'm looking forward to raids. In WoW I did progression in WoD and Legion. I haven't had time to do any in BFA.
I am not a fan of WoW's raids becuase they are 20 person at least, and 20 person statics are such a nightmare to organize and keep together that it's just unreasonable to expect it. FFXIV does a better job by making their challenge content 8 man tops.
I was at a loss for a bit about what to add, but on the subject of changing up the classic (or typical) raid scenario, I had an idea for a multi-stage scenario within an enclosed environment like raids are. That way you can still have things like destroyed buildings, throwing lamp posts etc.
Stage one, you have your mooks, it's a warmup and fun for combat junkies like me. You're fending these guys off from their goal. So perhaps instead of a giant HP bag or several smaller ones, you're doing this against a clock, or to build up a meter. Maybe it takes longer without certain roles, but remains doable since smacking around baddies isn't the important thing, denying their plan is.
Stage two, fight with mooks leads to burning building (for this example) so you have to save the people inside until the Fire dept shows up. As few escort style portions as possible though. So maybe you can knock out a wall for one area, carry twin infants out from a window and so on. If this is group content, different roles will have better options. Like the dps guy knocking down the wall, the tank holding back a collapsing roof, the healer healing npc's as they run to freedom.
But who should be at the scene of the crime? The mooks boss is seen! Boss realizes its time to go, so stage 3 the chase scene with your travel powers. Your role doesn't matter at all anymore, just keep up. If you can't close the distance or stay within a certain range, they get away, and event failed. But if you do, you proceed to...
Stage 4, confrontation with the boss in the hideout, back to combat, and this can be more like a traditional boss fight, BUT!
Stage five, the daring escape. In many examples of media, the big bad is defeated, maybe alive or dead, perhaps there's an option for players to decide like in Swtor. Regardless, however, the players need to escape while some final doomsday device is set to go off. So it's almost like the chase scene, but maybe traps get in your way or fleeing mooks or you have to save some final hostages.
Stage six, well, the players make it out, so we have our epilogue, and maybe a teaser for another 'raid' adventure later on.
The last part I wanted to include because some games, SWtor and TSW did this well. Setting up dungeons that not only where their own enclosed story, but over the course of several dungeons, told a larger story arc.
That's pretty much how I feel about most games that I play. I like having options and usually end up with a hybrid or utilitarian build (e.g. non-FotM), like playing a blapper with defensive abilities from the power pools (my namesake), or rocking a mean bane spider that gives you stealth, killer melee damage, and two ranged attacks if you picked up Scorpion's Patron Pool. My VEAT was probably one of my most versatile characters and I really liked playing him, which led me to really give the other CoV archetypes a shot, thus increasing my enjoyability of the overall game.
Overall, my preference is to play melee, which brings me to my raid suggestion: stop punishing melee. In the various half-dozen games that I've played since The Shutdown, I have successfully leveled and geared to the point where I could begin raiding in all of them. And in nearly all of those games, it seemed that if someone played ranged they just sat back and spammed their attacks with impunity but us meleeists have to constantly keep moving with the boss or out of the repeatedly utilized PBAoEs from the bosses. Now, I'm not saying you can't have movement-oriented fights or can't have PBAoEs but there needs to be a more... graceful solution to reducing melee DPS on the boss or whatever the rationale is for constructing the fights with the current dev-mindset.
in FFXIV with the exception of Bard and Machinist, Ranged dps have a HARDER time at least for many players due to not being able to move while attacking due to casts. Machinist is very demanding to play well however requiring perfect timing on some things and lining up many cooldowns. Bard is a bit easier but does less dps than most dps classes, being a support dps with party buffs to manage.
I do NOT think this would work for a super hero game however which surely demands mobility for every power.
There IS an entire powerself based around moving as little as possible, Solid Form. So fights where you don't want mobility will be important to have too. FF14 though is a pretty rare exception to the punish-the-melee mindset. And it's still more dangerous, you're just rewarded better with the tools you have at your disposal and the damage you do.
There's also another consideration to take into account - travel powers. Someone who can fly might be in the air and thus away from the ground-based AoEs, and someone with super speed would have a very easy time moving out of AoEs (though might also overshoot) unless things were handled well, both of which might lead to travel powers being disabled in raids, or at least restrict them to being the same level of mobility as normal movement (so you can still hover off the ground, even if you can't actually fly anymore)
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
My personal preference would be to set things up such that each Team (of 1-8 PCs) has different objectives, but there's is a "coordinated" aspect to those objectives. So if you have a 2 Team Raid (of 1-8 PCs + 1-8 PCs) then each Team needs to "do their own thing" independently of each other, but there can be a "coordinated" aspect between the 2 Teams ... such as needing to shut down power substations in different parts of the city (for example), and stipulate that the shutdowns need to be coordinated so as to be NEARLY simultaneous. In practice, this would amount to doing a countdown in Raid chat to time the glowie clicks, but it would be something that would require 2 Teams, each assigned to different instances (which the other team can't enter), in order to successfully complete each Team's Mission. Note that the Lambda Trial had a version of this kind of thing happening in it, where the Teams got split up partway through.
You can then take that same principle and broaden it out to needing to coordinate 3+ Teams, each with objectives in different Mission instances.
Here's another example for you.
Let's say you've got a Rikti Pylons type of zone wide setup, like we had in the Rikti War Zone.
Except that instead of each individual Pylon being a unique and separate individual (stationary) Object to destroy ... meaning that if you destroy one, none of the others are affected (until you get them all to trigger the Shields Down part of the event) ... instead all the Pylons in the zone are being "broadcast" a regeneration of HP that is spread out to all of the Pylons. Practical upshot being that instead of the optimal strategy being everyone gang up on ONE Pylon at a time sequentially, the superior choice is for everyone to scatter and take on Pylons in parallel with smaller clusters of PCs. That way, instead of all the HP regeneration getting focused into a single Pylon at a time, it needs to be spread out to all of the Pylons, dramatically reducing the DPS check needed per Pylon to defeat each Pylon.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Things I would like to see from raids.
Tier sizes... say 12 and 24
rewards being less about elite gear and more about unlocks... lets say each 12 man raid clear nets you half a token for a costume piece and the 24 man raid nets you 1 token for a costume piece.
lowest cost for piece would be 1 token but lets say mega awsome angel wings of doomfire... thats like 7 tokens.
A raid has to respect the trinity. CoX was playable without the trinity but if you actually had the majority of the rolls covered it made content much smoother. If I can do a raid without a tank or without heals ill quit raiding.
raiding doesnt have to be stupid hard... like learn the raid with a half dozen wipes as a new group then get your learning curve out of the way.
just make the story fun and each persons job actually important. give a reason to bring an aoe control, extra tanks with different tank sets, the various support heal/mitigation abilities. If each type can be useful in a raid... but the job doable by a similar set (but a bit harder for them) the raids will be fun enough to do, and just slightly outside the random pug range.
Supporting how I can, Starting up a DA group for art, stories, and concepts to be collected
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Please join up if you plan to make or collect CoT related art.
The trinity is not needed. Instead do roles but more than just 3. allow people to combine 2 from say 6 total choices, maybe Tank, Healer, DPS, Crowd Control, Debuffer and Buffer. Trinity suggests 3 boring overspecialized roles which is kinda anti most super hero themes. even FFXIV gave healer classes crowd control abilities and DPS buffs for the group, and tanks shield skills which could go on other players. and that games as classic MMO as they come these days.
Travel powers being disabled or restricted in content is a HUGE NO NO! We want to feel like super heroes. not super zeroes who have to walk on the ground every time we fight something! CO did this garbage and everyone hates it.
Instead perhaps have players be able to be targeted by something which temporarily knocks them out of their travel power for a few seconds. like Nailed to the Ground in CO. this would allow people to fly and fight in the air and still have to be close to the ground at important times.
Travel powers don't need to invalidate AoEs, usually those hit in 3 dimensions to some degree and constantly keeping them on either has a drawback or is simply nerfed in combat. That is how most games handle it, otherwise everyone would use them all the time.
There is zero reason to punish players for not playing in large groups or requiring a trinity. Having better or exclusive rewards for content that requires 20+ players and hours of time per attempt is just a big middle finger to people with jobs and lives. In a game that is able to dynamically scale the difficulty and size of encounters similar to CoX there isn't much reason to require a certain number of players for any event. If you bring more players into the party, you face a bigger fight. No matter whether you bring 50 friends or do it solo you still get your goodies if you win.
Unique content really does not need to be boring, lengthy, or require a small army in order to experience it. It also doesn't need a carrot to grind for, that can be woven into any and all facets of gameplay. Exploration, crafting, costume contests, base design contests, badges, story completion, basically anything you can think of can have fancy hats and titles and whatever else you want to unlock be associated with it.
The Carrot is why most people do any content more than once and is absolutely required. People in MMOs do content for the rewards and fun equally but if one was removed a lot of content would probably be deemed not worth it or people would go find another game which feels more rewarding to them for character advancement and such.
Modern MMOs are incredibly easy. Don't kid yourself XD
And just because I got a different view of things than you doesn't make my views terrible. Others have agreed with me and that should be enough to prove it.
MMOs need a major facelift.
You've never done Ultimate or most Savage content in FFXIV then. Calling that incredibly easy is more ludicrous than selling the brooklyn bridge to a ferengi.
All good ideas.
I'm all for variants that are more interesting than just a big bag o' hit points, as long as the content doesn't have the One Solution or the One Required Team Composition. I would hope for a variety of approaches (within reason of course) and that a team made up of any archetypes (including all the same) would still have a chance of completing the mission. Not necessarily as easy a chance, but the types of characters on the team should never preclude success.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Zee, I didn't say remove all carrots from the game. What I said was don't limit such rewards to specific content.
A great way to do this is having the same carrot be achieveable through several different routes, or simply have all carrots be achieveable using the same carrotbux currency that those routes provide, potentially separate from normal IGC. The idea is that a player can focus on the gameplay aspects that they enjoy most, whatever those are, and still get cool hats and whatnot. This doesn't even stop you from having certain carrots linked to thematic accomplishments - you can totally get the giant fish hat for beating up the giant fish boss or whatever, but if it is also available on the achievementbux(tm) store then it doesn't lock the fish hat away behind whatever gameplay aspect people aren't interested in. You can even keep the rewards relatively unique by making it essentially free if you've acquired the achievemnt, but cost much more achievementbux(tm) than the amount of bux beating the boss itself gives you. Basically, this means players get cool stuff thematic to what they have accomplished but can still dabble on the side sometimes if they see a cool hat they really want. So special achievement hats still are less common, but people can get them if they really want them enough without being forced into a particular bit of gameplay. Some people love raiding, some love crafting, some love costume contests, some stories or exploration....players will enjoy getting to do what they love! Forcing them to play a certain way or leave the game does exactly that, so why design a system that way? You can still keep the feeling of accomplishment and the carrot grind without telling players to raid or die.
Fun isn't a zero sum game where someone else has to lose so that another can win. Everyone can win.
edit: Just to be clear I'm not against the idea of having big raids in a game, that is fine. Adopting a stance of "we're only making content for those big raids and everyone else can play another game" is what I'm worried about, since dev teams have definitely done that in the past. It is less of a problem these days since developers started using some data gathering and analysis and realized that the percent of players that engaged with that content was slim, and many of those that did were doing it purely for the carrots.
Honestly if designers want to look for interesting content for MMO encounters a great place to get inspiration is not just other MMOs, but other coop games in general. This is especially true if those games don't have traditional enforced team roles. Games like vermintide (and even moreso with the sequel) have a variety of interesting events that can be done regardless of group composition. That may be an especially good comparison since that games lets players outfit themselves with a variety of choices to tailor their abilities towards a specific set of strengths and weaknesses but (after some balancing and bugfixing) any team composition can generally make it through any event on any difficulty. Some may shine in some areas and some may lack in others, but you can complete the content. One big part of this is that vermintide levels are never *just* a bossfight or minion clearing or timed event or teammate rescue, all the levels have a good variety of challenges. This means no matter what toolkits players chose to bring they will have some parts of the level that are easier and some that are harder.
That is just the first game that popped into my head, I'm sure people can think of others to draw inspiration from.
Actually, starting with Wrath of The Lich King, raids could be done with as few as 10 people. I believe the new flex system lets you go in with as few as 8.
I have to otherwise agree with you in terms of the delicate balancing act that will need to be done with the raid type system they put in place. In WoW, melee is often at a disadvantage because a lot of the mechanics favor ranged dps. It is quite annoying when you lose a spot because the hunter will get more DPS time in simply due to mechanics. (Having to run out of range because of point-blank aoe on another melee or the boss...) Would honestly love to see some bosses that do a room wide unavoidable silence that lasts 10-15 seconds. (But usually such mechanics are limited to healing spells...) I also agree that more players is not the same as making a fight more difficult. (It becomes difficult, but not the fight itself. It's coordinating so many people.)
There is not going to be a perfect solution to the problem. Having a dynamic set up for a boss, depending on the player's group composition, will only result in people taking 'easiest' combinations. Certain play-styles will still be shunned unless they have no other alternative. This is the fault of the community/players more then the developers. (Though it is up to them to try and make such an impact as small as possible.)
When I raided in WoW, I had a strict policy of "Give it your all, don't care about your spec". So long as a player was willing to listen to advice on improving their dps out-put I didn't care if they used the worst of the three specs of their class. It was pretty successful and while our times may not have been as good as raids that expected flavor of the month and top performing classes... we did get our first Lich King kill before several such groups. With our rag-tag team of 'pugs'. (Was a collective open raiding group called Leftovers, so not necessarily randoms, but people who didn't run with us regularly.) But this mentality is rare in MMOs in general. People want to take the easiest and quickest path. I associate it with being entitled and impatient. ("I don't have time to waste on that!")
If we break down an MMO, regardless of how innovated it is, it boils down to pushing a button to defeat the boss. So using that against any particular MMO is... like saying an orange is worse then an apple because the orange has seeds. Balancing boss abilities and powers is difficult... especially if you want to do so without affecting other fights.
Oh for sure, game currency is definitely far superior to the ancient outdated RNG item drops from content. Not that there isnt SOME place for that still but it's very bad for everything to be RNG.
My current raid group for FFXIV has the same mentality, in fact our group has BOTH a Black Mage, and a Samurai, jobs which are definitely non meta for raiding.
But to be honest, like I said earlier in the thread, I do NOT want CoT to make content which is as hard as Savage/Mythic becuase then you get all the problems with come with that, statics bring practically required, (a lot of us adults DON'T have time for that) and some people being elitist jerks about it and such. I think the difficulty of "Pug friendly" content like normal trials and raids/24 mans in FFXIV is about right.
I think I understand your viewpoint, but I'm not sure the issue is actually roles. It's that PvE enemies are traditionally predictable. They can be learned. Certainly WoW has made a lot of money giving two basic gameplay experiences - in PvP enemy behaviour is inherently unpredictable and, while knowing your and the enemies capabilities is very helpful, an equal match up is usually decided by who makes the best decisions in the heat of the moment. In PvE, good decision making in useful, but it's primarily about prior knowledge and perfect execution of set pieces.
It doesn't have to be that way. Even WoW themselves flirted with doing things differently, for at least one boss fight. There was a battle in the old Sunwell expansion where you fight a party of elves. They didn't follow the usual aggro rules and all had their own AI. Most players hated it, because it wasn't what they expected from dungeon content. I thought it was a refreshing change, but Blizzard never did anything like it again because the response was so poor. Everyone complained like crazy because the elves would run around massacring healers and dpsers, and not beat on the tank like every other nice monster out there.
I'd love to see more content that's not quite as unpredictable as PvP, which I enjoy as an occasional distraction, but doesn't follow the current MMO raid paradigm of 'Read a website and watch a few videos before actually going near the content, and then try and follow the established strategy as closely as you can'. An added plus would be that if raid enemies were allowed half decent AI we wouldn't need the current situation where some mook orc bodyguard or whatever takes more to kill than 400 tyrannosaurus rexes just because 'he's a raid enemy'.
Whether there's a wider market for it, though, I've no idea. I'm guessing MMO business folks have the attitude 'The people who like that kind of challenge PvP, let's keep the two separate'.
The predictability of enemies factors into the design though, difficult mechanics based content is possible becuase you can predict what enemies will do and control the outcomes to a degree. you cant have a lot of mechanics happening at once if theres no way to predict that.
You definitely dont need a video before doing content. On patch day everyone goes in blind. and SOMEONE has to make the video and figure it out first.
On the flip side of everyone going in blind on patch day, it is totally OK to teach players the basics of mechanics in lower level or more relaxed content before seeing in a "do or die" scenario. By all means start teaching players early by giving them optional "high octane" content with extra mechanics in it.
I know "don't stand in the fire" is an old joke at this point for MMO players but keep in mind a huge number of players, especially the sort that loved CoX, are either not traditional MMO players or not raiders. Many are more interested in roleplaying, costumes, and just beating up mooks while flying around in spandex. You can still design events that make them feel like a hero without having to go through the oldschool hard knocks raiding experience so much if the game does a good job of conveying information to them.
It is totally OK to have interesting mechanics that aren't just limited to single events or bosses. In fact, having most content include a number of mechanics (they can be both hurdles for the player or things to give them an edge in the fight) can mean they are easier to balance for a variety of toolkits. If the event is balanced around being able to do, say, 50 or 75% of the mechanics then groups (or soloists) can pick what opportunities in the event are going to fit their toolkit.
There is a really great video talking about this sort of thing using megaman as an example of teaching players using intuitive examples during controlled gameplay before it "matters". Let me see if I can find it....
Ah here it is
[youtube]8FpigqfcvlM[/youtube]
I really like this thread, a lot of great thinking and input you guys have going on here. Personally I’ve never been a huge raid guy but I’ve been in them and several run of the mill boss fights.
Some of your comments have gotten me thinking... how about a boss that can see which party member makes the greatest threat to them (most effective against their weakness) and as a result they are his most highly regarded target in the group. By this I mean the fight is a bit more chess-like in that the pieces all have the same moves available but entering you aren’t necessarily sure who the AI will decide isthe king and queen of the group.
Maybe it’s the DPSers or maybe a debuffer or crowd controller or whichever based on the power sets, levels, and combination of roles in the team.
Maybe this is a really naive idea. I really don’t know I was just having a thought. Ignore it if it’s fruitless. I just seemed like a way to see some variation from the same boss fight depending on how your team is comprised. Soloists are in the same boat no matter what...
Part of the idea is that depending on who you see the AI targeting you may see a much easier or for that matter harder way you will have to go to win. It would force “in the fight” critical thinking and tactical changes.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
It's possible to do content which doesn't REQUIRE certain roles to be there/do their jobs, and just make it so everyone has to adapt to the situation using the tools they have. but the elements of the roles will still be there, just used in a different way.
I'm reminded of the time i did Dun Scaith in FFXIV level synced with 24 healers, so no tanks, and no dps. we got through.
Here are a couple of thoughts for you all to consider:
With regards to “raid group size” it is my hope (read far from a promise) to use our dynamic scaling tech to create expandable maps, objectives, pawn group sizes, etc, based on the raid size. That being, a raid can start with a group of 8 and each group which is added after that will result in increasing the difficulty. My current thought is to keep it limited to 1 - 3 groups. These, of course are for instanced based raids.
There could very well be dynamic events in the open world which could, for all intent be considered an “ad-hoc raid”. With more than that.
In fact, if we can make this work, I’d like to be able to do this for all our “task force like” content. Where those start off at a higher than standard difficulty but can be started by a solo player and hold up to one group of 8. But then if there is more than 1 group of 8, it opens up the “raid version”.
Short version is I would like to see raids scale for 1 group up to 3 groups (at least, perhaps 4 but 3 sounds more manageable).
The reason is that I want to give Super Teams content they can engage with playing in multiple groups together. I want to give reasons for Leagues to engage in content together.
Which brings me to rewards. Of course the possibility of gaining something should be worth the effort of playing through more difficult content. Part of this can be provided through our Achievements and Challenges system. Another bonus for playing can be provided by playing with your Super Team and League in a raid as further incentive.
Other rewards can be unique badges for completion which unlock costume pieces, weapon props, visual fx, or unique animations.
I don’t want to get into “drops” because there are some aspects of that design we’re not ready to get into, but there could be other “stuff” earned too.
Of course, since we are talking about dynamic expansion of difficulty this takes us to mechanics.
There are a variety of ideas we have to make content engaging. Someone mentioned Melee being “punished” for being up close in many raids. Part of why this happens is because usually, those characters are set up to also be able to be more sustainable in combat than others. The threat of spike or burst damage creates risk for these types of characters. If, when in combat the damage towards these characters were more over time. players in groups are pretty darn good at figuring out how sustain their Melee team mates through regular streams of damage.
That being said, there are considerations for this aspect of game play as well. For one, we are aiming to have more mobile combat where many powers don’t automatically root you. But we also have other mechanics to consider such as damage reflection which can return a portion of damage dealt back at the attacker. This creates risk for both Melee and ranged heroes. Heck we can even set it up so that reflection occurs in ranged attacks only if we want to.
Dr. Tyche has mention how he has some ideas for a “bullet hell-like” mechanic for cetain content which can mess with anyone in the area of effect.
We do what to include more than just “dps” the bad guy down to 0 though that will certainly remain a core part of game play but other possibilities that have been mentioned like puzzles, area defense, and so on have long been part of our plans for future content.
Someone also mentioned AI. And here again, we hope to one day include the possibility of using a heuristic neural network AI which can learn and adapt to players. Again, this is far from a promise, but we do want to provide some more difficulty to certai. AI. Though this is much further off than other aspects of design.
I hoe this long post of info helps.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
If you can manage a neural network AI for enemies that sounds like it would be super cutting edge as far as gaming is concerned. I hope you get to try it one day.
It actually isn’t that cutting edge. You’d be surprised how many AI devs have toyed with heuristic and nn AI for a lot of games. It does have interesting application but can also prove problematic for game devs as well.
Becuase is the AI self adapts and begins using behaviors that the cause people to question “why”, a dev often won’t have much of an idea. And if the issue in question is for some reason disruptive of game play, often the result is to scrub the AI and begin over from scratch because the dev doesn’t know which set of circumstances caused the AI to begin the problematic behavior in order to figure out the best way to correct it.
Our AI dev has some interesting ideas for his AI and how to provide some “rails”, but we’re a pretty long way off from using it.
Our AI in early tests was just...nasty. Like really, really hard to put play. And it wasn’t specifically programmed with much in the way of standard AI protocol (if this, then that). It learned the map, camped you, figured out how to flank and perform pincher attacks (when you faced multiples). It was relentless, like fighting terminators on steroids.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I remember reading about that one. I had a much more basic version in mind with a very limited set of critical thinking boundaries so as to prevent god-like undefeatable bosses. More just an intuitively adaptable boss. One that sees the team and based on a couple probability calls determined the most likely defeats and thus which enemy Was most critical to the highest probabilities.
The more I’ve thought about this the more I see it tending to target the controller/buffer/debuffer characters but I suppose it’s quite variable depending on how well reasoned the AI is limited to. Just thoughts really. I wouldn’t expect a well functioning version of it for some time at best.
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
I mentioned Melee being punished, and I'm not entirely sure I follow your the part I bolded. Because they were more sustainable, as in durable, because you mentioned the threat of burst/spike damage? Since they can't die as easy, the devs need to put in mechanics to threaten them and therefore reduce their DPS e.g. their viability? Unless you mean sustainable as in, sustained DPS. And, again, I encountered more mechanics that simply put the boss out of reach of melee while ranged could still sustain their DPS.
On the topic of mobile combat, that really circles back to my point about mechanics that really seem to be targeted against melee DPS and less so for ranged. For example, TSW/SWL had a TON of mobile fights that weren't enjoyable where they really just enforced your dodge rolls (I also saw this in Neverwinter), and heaven forbid if you did that wrong because of the ridiculously long recharge time (even with gadgets to reduce) and the vast majority of dodge-able mechanics were insta-kill.
They also had quite a few fights that involve reflecting damage shields which, yes, were less of a threat for melee because those fights also tended to be mobile but, again, they had a large chance to kill you if you were a little too eager with your DPS rotation. These were a few of the factors that made it rare to see a meleeist (besides the tank) in that game. Less so in SWL due to the limited number of dungeons available, but certainly in TSW when you had Slaughterhouse and other higher level content that had more involved fights and lots of environmental damage immediately surrounding the boss.
I'm not saying, as I mentioned above, don't have these things. Just don't do them to death. And I'll echo everyone's statements about making content engaging because no one wants a boring fight or other forms of unengaging content. I know that you, the devs, can't make everyone happy as one person's enjoyable aspect of a fight may irritate another player equally as much, but as long as there is variety, I don't think it'll be as much of an issue.
What I’m saying is that many game devs use the burst / spike damage model to force Melee to break off intentionally. Games that do this well then place the ranged attackers and buffers at risk if they don’t manage their aggro well. Not all games do this well but that is usually the intent of design. Create moments of risk for Melee which can in turn create moments of risk for others.
It also works to extend encounters. Making Melee attackers stop attacking, even if others continue to attack reduced over all incoming damage to the encounter target.
I agree though, over use of any mechanic can end up in different pieces of content feeling very much the same as others, making game play feel monotonous.
When I brought up mobility in combat, I specifically mentioned being rooted while attacking. We don’t have dodge roll or blocking mechanics in this game. But we do have a lot of movement powers and unlike the old game, don’t plan if having all powers root the character during animation time of the power. This provides more freedom of movement during combat than the old game allowed. That is all I meant.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Thank you for the clarification. And rooting wasn't always a thing in CoH. That was added later, mostly to reduce the barrier of entry into PvP for new players, or as the patch notes called it "[url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2007-02-27#Animations_and_Power_Effects]animation standardization[/url]". Right before the changes there was no rooting and PvP was very mobile and fast paced, which the current, experienced PvPers enjoyed because it engaging and involved. For whatever reason, Lighthouse the Community Coordinator spilled the beans on the forums about the changes happening to PvP [i]weren't[/i] for the benefit of the current PvPers and that went over about as well as you can expect. He wasn't the CC for much longer after that. Draw whatever conclusions you like.
That notwithstanding, I'm glad to hear that there will be greater mobility in CoT.
Rooting was added not just because of PvP. Players were jousting giant monsters and avoiding being hit back entirely negating the need for any protections. It just so happened to be a problem in PvP (as far as the devs felt) and for pve.
There will be some powers that require rooting. Some which leverage intentionally not moving to get maximum benefit, and there will be movement penalties for continually attacking which may result in eventually being rooted.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Learning AI can lead to less predictable and organic behavior but that is often not desireable, let alone necessary.
You can do a lot of cool things with it but it isn't an objective upgrade over traditional scripted behavior in all scenarios.
Definitely cool for trying to give a more human like player experience that can adapt. That can shine in some scenarios, like pvp fopcused gameplay where the bot and the player have similar tools.
Yeah I can definitely see how it could cause a problem. it would be the robot revolution of gaming, where the AI tries to defeat the player and of course succeeds since it controls the rules of the game to some degree. A good game developer however never tries to defeat the player, they create challenges for the player to overcome. A boss or enemy in a game EXISTS to be defeated by players. its there to challenge them, "hey I'm a badass come see if you can stop me"
I look forward to facing an AI somewhere along those lines. One thing I hate about raids (like the ones in WoW) is that they are for the most part formulaic. Once you learn exactly how to dance the dance and jump through all of the hoops you might get a prize. I want the encounter itself to be the prize, and I do not need to beat it every time I attempt it. I expect that a group of people working towards defeating such an adversary would make the time spent in game (and possibly outside when you scheme & plan) worthwhile.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
The only way to make such a thing really popular with most people at all is to reward players based on performance regardless of whether they "beat" the encounter. This could work for a limited portion of the games content for sure but if it was the only thing I know for sure I wouldn't be playing at all.
The content itself is never enough to keep players wanting to do it. They'll do it once just to see it then never touch it again if it doesn't give them SOMETHING they want for doing it more than once.
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