One of my pet hates from MMO's as time has gone hard is to artificially force the removal of tactics and rather create tank and spank mechanics through the introduction of a concept called rage timers.
Rage timer, the idea that for no reason in an rp sense the boss turns into pretty much a one hit killing machine due to a time-frame that a team has sustained conflict with it.
I would much rather boss fights be difficult but reward alternative tactics for bringing the bosses down, for example if you can sustain long enough to get a victory that should still be a victory.
Ways to prevent just wars of attrition could be the removal of the ability to regenerate mana/energy through normal means, this would mean you would burn through supplies to replenish through fights.
Never liked rage timers myself since they just devolve into DPS races.
As for removing normal resource regen, please no. If it is anywhere near to how it was in CoH then we would burn through those supplies way faster than we can gain new ones and it would make it mandatory to have at least one person on the team with an ability that can replenish resources for the whole team.
Yeah, its called playing support XD
20041004-20120910
I believe rage timers will not be present here. I didn't quite understand your explanation, but I think you mean when a boss lets loose with some sort of super-attack when it gets to 25% health or something like that, right?
In any event, MWM have told us they will be using something called [i]momentum[/i]. And as momentum builds, it can be used to fuel various effects, it also dissipates and when it does, it gets turned into a resource equivalent to what [i]inspirations[/i] were in CoX.
Both heroes and NPC's get momentum, so I would expect that boss monsters have some pretty cool momentum-fueled attacks. However, I expect it will not be too different from what you refer to as rage attacks, If I understand your meaning correctly.
You can find out more about momentum here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1058094
[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.
Its more so like in Destiny when raid bosses become "enraged" because you took too long to kill them.
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
Oh. Now that's just lazy game design.
I can think of 101 different ways to implement a "you took too long to clear the encounter" ending. Enraging the boss is not one of them. Besides, if we're going to have instanced raids, I would hope the encounters don't have a timer like this. The marathon battles where the last healer has to solo the boss and chips away at his last 2% for 15 minutes are the stuff of legends. (I know, because I did that as a healer in a game once years ago and it felt so epic I'm still blushing from the excitement as I recall it)
[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 remember struggling desperately to get enough holds built up, that I could pass a Rez to a teammate without dying myself. As you said, it was Epic!
Be Well!
Fireheart
Not sure what you are trying to say here but that kind of design leans dangerously close to making only support sets with resource replenishment viable for play, and it would only be those sets that can do direct resource replenishment not those that "just" buffs resource regen.
Also note that it would break the design-philosophy of that any group composition should be viable for any content by effectively mandating that those support sets are present for some content.
Its the only way to make new types of class viable in the holy trinity, otherwise you will literally only get tank and spank fights built around straight healer, dps and tanks.
Also note that it would break the design-philosophy of that any group composition should be viable for any content by effectively mandating that those support sets are present for some content.
Afaik the only boss in COH that had a "rage" mode was an early incarnation of Hamidon. Part of that was due to player tactics. Essentially if the assault force, around 200 players in this case, were not able to hold the Hamidon during a particular phase the Hamidon would spawn a powerful mitochondria for each player in the zone. Because players were typically in large clusters this created a diabolical cluster of Mitos that would tear apart anything that got within range.
Like I said this had more to do with player tactics than an actual rage timer. The design was that only a few dozen people would be engaged in combat with the Hamidon and they would clear the mitochondria each time they spawned However, because players were trying to get the most rewards possible that meant coming up with tactics that rewarded the most people possible. Thus cramming the zone with 200 combatants became a desirable endeavor. The raid was eventually changed and the zone limited to 50 players to prevent this sort of event engineering.
Anyway, long tales from times gone by aside, seems like a no-brainer to me. Let the people fight if they want to fight even if they never win. In COH there were plenty of people who would take on impossible fights solo, just to see if they could. I was one of them. Forcing them to do it under a timer seems unnecessary.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
Rage timers and lockout were two mechanics that absolutely flabbergasted me when I started playing other games after CoH shut down. Not... a... fan.
I'm not saying that there couldn't possibly be good, fun ways to implement these things if they were needed for some reason, but I don't know why they would be needed and I've yet to see them implemented in a fun way.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
So you are saying that to make other classes viable they should essentially become mandatory to be able to clear certain content?
Just to be clear, the issue here isn't about classes but rather specific power sets. Considering that there will be some classes with support secondaries then forcing specific classes would be hard, only way I can see that being done would most likely go against another design philosophy that of no class exclusive power sets (at least outside of epic ATs).
Guess you didn't raid much in CoH (well, technically I didn't either) but from the experience I had in it buffers and debuffers were more than welcome since in aggregate they brought more than straight up DPS would, even when you include their secondary effects. Depending on what power sets the other classes have taken, mainly tanks, the synergy with support shifts. Take a regen tank, they synergise better with defense and/or resistance buffers than with "straight healers" since they cover the areas that the regen tank is most lacking in.
There are other ways to make control/support classes viable, especially when you look at the whole "piece" of content being done and not just a single event (a.k.a the boss fight) in it.
Soloing Eochai on my Tanker was one of my proudest moments in CoH... and yes, it took like forever. Any kind of timer or 'can't replenish resources' mechanic would've made the very idea foolish.
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
If this is in reference to The Secret World, I absolutely agree. CoH/V will always have a strong place in my heart, but TSW was also a fantastic game that wasn't so much as ruined by them but the aforementioned rage timers and dungeon lockouts certainly didn't make it any better. It forced players to limited chances at and therefore experience in dungeons (they should have had a loot lockout instead), which made it difficult to learn fights and get better, and then rage timers reduced the very expansive and creative skill wheel to canned, highly optimized FotM builds that if you didn't have, you would be kicked nigh-immediately from teams because you either weren't purely in DPS gear or heal gear or tank gear. I get it, these aren't the early 2000s and people can't commit to hours-long raids anymore, but rage timers are [b]NOT[/b] the solution. I've mentioned this before previously that I severely hope that they're not implemented in CoT.
It's not just TSW, many MMO's have such limitations.
Rage timers are not so much about reducing the time it takes to kill the boss since during the time it takes for you to learn the boss having to start over again once you hit the rage-timer can extend the total time to several times that of what it would have taken if they could just keep going. From what I've heard it was more about "forcing" you learn the encounter and then to do it in an efficient manner which somewhat makes sense, but imo that is the worst way of doing it. Personally I think that having varying amount of loot based on different criteria would be a better way to do it since it doesn't force you into doing it a specific way.
I wasn't inferring that TSW was the only one to do it, just that it was the one for me that leapt immediately to mind. Literally every dungeon in TSW had rage timers, not just their raid. I've played about a half a dozen MMOs to max level since CoH/V shut down (TSW, SWTOR, Neverwinter, Tera, etc) and I never ran into rage timers to the extent that I did in TSW, which is why I thought of it first.
I can't say for certain what it's intent was, but I as I mentioned before I certainly saw what it's implementation did in regards to it's effect on the game.
Sorry if I made it sound like that but we are talking to a larger audience here and not everyone may have the experiences that we have, so to be one the safe side it's not a bad idea to add in a bit more clarity.
No harm, no foul. I appreciate the clarification. /em salute
I did raid occasionally in CoH, but at the time I was fairly young. I was raiding Burning Crusade in WoW at age 12. However, The city of heroes account wasn't mine my father had three I think by the end and I had two characters that i mained a Blaster and a Scrapper, Occassionally I would get brought in to man a maxed out character for raiding once in a blue moon.
Now I agree CoH was how I would say before recent trends, Now the holy trinity is much more strict. After playing games like wildstar, having no ability in the raiding/high tier dungeon environment to play hybrid support type characters because of the lack of "dps". Its why i believe its nessassary to create a 4th part and break the trinity, otherwise we will get into the cycle of a raid have X number of tanks, X number of healers and XX numbers of dps. Its always made the players wanting to play tanks often get forced into DPS if they want to field on raid parties.
Ive always been lucky in my case ive always served in guilds that have needed experienced raid tanks, up until Wildstar when i decided i would give a support build and in the end it was pointless because it wasn't viable due to the games rage mechanics.
The first raid i did with Serenity in SWTOR, how many times that the mechanic of a raid timer caused the wipe rather than any other reason, all it goes to show is the boss is so badly designed and weak that they had to develop a mechanic to make it impossible to beat unless it had 1% health left.
EDIT: while i don't have fears of the CoH/CoV community being inclusive, if the game design doesn't allow for it and the content forces a tank and spank play type, hybrids and the laugh that comes with them get wiped out.
Raid timer or not, if the condition for success is to defeat the target by bringing it to 0 hit points, no matter the method, there will be one constant: some metric of required dps.
CoH allowed for a huge range of possible combinations to achieve success. There were all tank teams (hinTanker Tuesdays), all defender teams (hello fellow Repeat Offenders!), and anything in between. We certainly want to provide the same range of play in CoT.
I'm not a fan of rage timers. It can have its place if it is part of that particular encounter. i don't feel it should be part of every encounter. It can be a tool in the kit, just not the only one to grab.
While CoH relied on high regen, which either required sufficient straight dps, or leaned heavily on regen debuffs, we're looking to impart amwider range of useful mechanics. Every type of power should have its uses. Say a big bad has no evasive powers, and you have a support with evasion debuffs - those debuffs will still have some impact on the encounter.
Controls being non-binary will mean they will always have some effect in game play even if the big bad ismdifficult to control.
We will have our Momentum mechanic which can make encounters interesting: what happens when high dps on the big bad builds its momentum that lets it use a game-changing power? Suddenly, the encounter becomes less about defeating the big bad as fast as possible, but about pacing.
And we can still rely on other mechanics such as hit point thresholds for triggers, threat mechanics, defeat to trigger a new form.
One thing I'd like to experiement with (this is by far no promise), is different conditions of "defeat", instead of the tried and true 0 hp to win, including a Captured status - where the target is fully controlled for a certain length of time - now it is control-output over time instead of dps, or Demoralized status - where the target is debuffed to such a degree for a long enough time that it cannot itself "win" by defeating the players and it "gives up".
These would be very new types of mechanics and again, would need some serious testing, but could open up more comvinations for ways to win for the players.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I like these ideas. The 'Captured' status reminds me of the days when lag was the true enemy of original Hami Raids, and we used to just spam holds on the boss and defeat him with Containment damage. We'd have the DPS run in towards the end to get their one hit and then stay out of the jello to reduce the chance of failure due to lag as much as possible. It was slower and boring, but it would help to guarantee a win for the server and HOs all around. And who doesn't like a shiny new HO?
Lets call them com[b]win[/b]ations!
[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.
Ha! (I really need to proof-read when I'm on mobile).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
These all sound very interesting - and would add a whole new dynamic to the game. For really big bosses/raids you could even mix and match - for instance one thing has to be locked down/debuffed while another thing needs the DPS applied. It could make for some very interesting and challenging encounters.
Maybe we could romance a villain to gain victory :P
No. No. No. It's a forum game in and of itself just deciphering what word you are actually using.
It is possible. Hami had that hold-phase as an example, or the itrial where escapees couldn't be controlled very well. Of course the trick is to have other other types of play styles stuff to donat the same time so everyone feels like they're contributing. Certainly it is possible encountes has one or two of those methods which are easier or harder than the others.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
[url=http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html]450. When told to distract the villainess, they didn't mean with a surprise marriage proposal.[/url] =P
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
ROFL
I love that list. Sadly? No not sadly, hilariously enough, some of those rules would also apply to my days of P&P RPGing.
Hey, [url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/what-happens-when-damage-isnt-only-avenue-defeat]that sounds familiar ...[/url]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yeah, there you go again, cribb'in off my noted ;)
And to be clear, I'm soecifically speaking with regards to the topic, which is more along the lines of our version of an AV or monster. This wouldn't be applicable toward standard encounters.
I've also identified where this concept will have some specific issues for debuffs which may not let it work at all, or at least make it so there is parity among all the possible permutations of "ways to defeat" the big bad. It is going to require a long, hard look but on the surface, the mechanics still lean toward damage being thr most consistent method.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Would this be caused by the fact that your/our Control Powers are NOT Binary? Most of the AVs in CoX ignored or had such a high resistance value to Control Effects that it was virtually a waste of time. At most you might make them hesitate or possibly break their attack chain, that was the most that could be achieved. The fact that you are going with "leveled" effects means that you have to come up with alternative AI responses to those types of attacks, yes?
No. Our control system isn't the issue. It is a matter of parity of types of effects and time.
Quite simply, doing health damage is the most consistent and intuitive method for players to grasp.
The issues I indentified may not be insurmountable, more of a matter of applying a path to victory system which doesn't impart too much rigidness in encountet design to ensure parity while also working with the entirety of combat mechanics.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Here's an idea:
If you consider that "the big bad" could have several 'layers', then it might work.
Let's say this boss has four layers. There are a couple of ways to peel away a layer: one way is to remove all the hit points of that layer. Another way is to completely mez/stun/stop the boss fully. Once all the layers are gone, the boss is defeated. How the boss actually loses will depend on whether the last layer was removed by damage or mez.
since mez/stuns are not binary and since the boss has the ability to shake them off by spending its own momentum, it could be possible to make it so both methods could take about the same amount of time and effort on the part of the group. Allowing the boss to use different momentum effects depending on whether it is being mezzed or damaged would go a long way towards balancing the encounter.
This way, a party could actually combine methods, and would also allow a mez party to fall back on damage if their mezzers get taken out half-way through or if he just proves to be too tough to mezz down. ...or vice versa.
[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.
Tactical response team lobs a stun grenade into a room. Bad guy is temporarily blinded by the flash, disoriented by the concussion, and deafened by the bang. Tactical response team rushes in, throws bad guy to the ground and handcuffs him.
I assume this is the kind of thing introduced in the last ten or so posts?
If so, I like it. I'm not sure how to implement such a defeat condition in a way that is both intuitive and satisfying, but I would very much like to see it attempted.
Especially as a choice that affects the three-way morality parameter. Soft take down vs. hard take down vs. termination. That would fit nicely.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My author page at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2MPvkRX
My novelty shirts: https://amzn.to/31Sld32
Having a "lean" in the Defeat methods is not a problem. Reserving an EXCLUSIVE place for Damage Only is ... less than satisfactory. Leaving "room" for alternative methods to Defeat your foes in the design space would seem ... prudent ... therefore.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
That is only if the bounds of performance for all the effect types within a given category were within acceptable parameters. If not, and the applicable methods either require a more homogenized encounter design or creating an entirely different mess.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
So I didn't read everything in this. But, here is my 2 cents.
Two different kinds of rage timers. Hard and soft. Hard rage timers are when you hit it, you instantly lose, no if hands or buts. Soft rage timer, is when the boss goes crazy, increasing his damage and attacks to a rate that is impossible to withstand for a long period of time.
I believe in rage timers. Not for DPS race means, but without rage timers, there are so many ways for people to cheese encounters. Breaking the fights by making your team have low DPS, but impossible to kill survivability.
I know that (best example) WoW has extreme DPS races, and I'm not against them like so many others, because it can be REALLY intense getting down to the seconds. Nothing feels as intense beating a boss with 5 or less seconds left. However, I'm not exactly FOR them and wouldn't mind missing them.
I just don't want to see full defender/tank teams, and DPS being ignored, because people want to ignore mechanics through sheer survivability.
I think it is supposed to be "no ifs, ands, or buts"; but I kinda like "no if hands or butts" myself.
[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.
Understandable. I respectfully disagree, but I can still see where you are coming from.
You say that you don't want to see full defender/tank teams. I say, "Why not?" That's the player's choice. And it opens up options for teaming and I'm usually all about having options. There shouldn't, in my opinion, just have to have the one tank, one healer, and the remaining DPS as the standard loadout for teaming. That's what made CoH/V great. Players could have all controller teams and just crush content (Fire/Rad superteams anyone?) And there shouldn't just be the one way to defeat an encounter. If they willingly choose to go into a boss fight with nothing but healer classes and/or agro management, so be it. That's on them. Additionally, the devs have mentioned that they're willing to explore other options for defeating bosses, so having default rage timers of either variety goes against that development manta. That's not to say that there shouldn't be rage timers ever, but I feel that there should be a lore-related reason for it and not have it, like TSW, where every single boss had one.
So long as we can still have Tanker Tuesdays.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
As I understand it, a full tank team was considered to be quite acceptable to those who participated in "Tanker Tuesday" runs. And I've also seen people who want to be rid of any "holy trinity" team build requirement. One player's cheese is another player's viable tactic.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Good ol' Tanker Tuesdays. Champion FTW!
I almost mentioned that specifically after 'agro management' but I figured since I mentioned Fire/Rad superteam that it would have been redundant.
EDIT: Wow, that was one hell of a rant.
TSW?
Also should note, I'm not a big fan of hard rage counters. Soft I do approve of though.
Just to add more, that is where we definitely disagree. That is what I think made CoX fail, but I think that has less to do with rage counters. Their bosses were horrific, all of them. From instanced to Hamidon. All the bosses were the absolute definition of tank and spank. They had 0 mechanics to them. I mean, there were so many fights that people just Ctrl - Clicked 1 ability and walked away. I'd say 75% of the Hamidon raid people were afk.
Without either some mechanic that forces people to be active, or some rage timer that forces people to be active, and really try to kill the boss. People will get cheese comps that ignore everything and can just afk kill it. And that will become the standard, where if you try anything else you're an insane troll (I've seen this happen more than once).
Now, I'm not disagreeing about the holy trinity. I'm one who loves experimenting, and coming up with unique comps. We used a Shadow Priest in WoW vanilla raiding before it was an actual thing, WASNT GREAT, but it wasn't nearly as bad as some people thought. I'd hate to see 1 earth tank, 1 empath healer, 3 energy blasters only groups. Just as much as I'd hate to see fire/rad controller only groups becoming the super meta.
Granted, CoX was the best MMO community I've ever seen, and people didn't mind so much that you weren't the meta. However, times have sadly changed.
I do tend to get ranty depending on the subject, but in all honesty that wasn't one of those occasions, believe it or not. This, on the other hand...
Firstly, I apologize. I should have defined TSW (The Secret World), but as it was mentioned earlier in the thread, I mistakenly assumed you knew what it was. And you did state that you hadn't read everything, so that was on me.
Secondly, thank you for the clarification on the hard/soft timers.
Third, I can't say I agree that CoH/V "failed." Yes, it was shut down, but Posi even stated that going to their hybrid model was extremely profitable for them in one of his AMAs on Reddit, so saying that they unabashedly failed (without further definition) is hard for me to let pass. I'm going to hazard a guess and say that you meant that they failed at raid mechanics, but I can't agree with that they failed [i]because[/i] of lack of more involved raid content. Now, to be fair, I agree with some of the points you made. Original Hamidon was boring. It's safe to say, as you mentioned, that many of us were guilty of putting an attack on auto after putting the bubbler on follow. The revamp, while more involved, wasn't much different. I feel that they did do better with later Incarnate Trial content, such as the Avatar of Hamidon in the Underground Trial and Tyrant in Magisterium, but yes, they were never as complicated (some might say overly complicated) as WoW raid boss encounters. And I might not've been a dev in CoH/V, so it's my opinion that they never intended raid encounters to be that way, that they should be more accessible to the average, even casual, gamer. Do I think they should have reduced the difficulty for the lowest common denominator? Absolutely not, but they shouldn't get to the point where people are wiping on them, hour after hour, night after night, for weeks to months, like vanilla WoW. That's just frustrating, and many of us aren't college-dorm dwelling kids anymore that have ridiculous amounts of free time at our disposal.
And my personal frustration with rage timers comes from playing TSW following CoH/V's shutdown. In all of their dungeons, every single boss had a rage timer. That rage timer (vis a vis the players) literally forced a very imaginative and creative skill system into canned builds to try and maximize DPS. People would literally kick you off the team if you weren't in full DPS gear, even if your hybrid build was better due to gear/skill synergy. All people looked at was your 1410 health and knew that you had all DPS gear on. If you didn't, boom, gone. Players were trying to ensure that they could deal enough DPS to beat the rage timers, which resulted in poorer gameplay and unimaginative gearing options. It was literally the only mechanic they had. So, suffice it to say, I'm a little salty on the concept and implementation of rage timers.
As I mentioned before, it's not like I don't think that CoT shouldn't have them. They should have them [i]sparingly[/i] and with [i]good[i] reason. Big Boss fight in dungeon 1, 2, 3, and 4 shouldn't all have rage timers because some people don't want other people face-rolling their way through content. I also enjoy tinkering with builds and coming up with clever synergies, in addition to playing for challenge. That doesn't mean everyone should be encouraged or even required to play that way. Again, like I mentioned before, I believe in options. And those options should include difficulty sliders, much like CoH/V had. That way, if you want easily bash your way through hordes of flunkies, knock your (or their) socks off. If you want to run through mobs of elite bosses for the difficulty, that should be available to you too. This also applies to raid content. A previous suggestion of mine was that it should scale to the number of people involved, either in health/damage, or even in mechanics, such as the boss switching from single target attacks to targeted AoE and/or PBAoE. Thankfully, the devs have said that they've looked at other "defeat conditions" to beat bosses. So I'm all for more challenging content and keeping players engaged but give them options aside from forcing them to dodge an incredibly annoying amount of damage templates or forcing them to bring only certain characters/builds/gear for a certain amount of DPS.
As for the holy trinity, there's a whole other epic thread about that. Let's just say I'm a fan of asymmetrical warfare.
Agreed, CoH/V was the best damn MMO community ever.
Ah, a good response! Nice to have people who are willing to actually discuss something. That said, for rants, it would be nice if you broke it up a bit better ;-). Purely because I'm one who has to re-read sentences often, and easy to get lost in gigantic paragraphs. Also, I meant mine was a rant, not yours.
Also, CoX didn't exactly FAIL, you're correct. I do think it could have been a bit better with a better progression system, and end game. But they had a seriously loyal fanbase, and I'm sure the fanbase alone would have kept the game alive. NCSoft truly allowed for such great things to hit the world, but they certainly only cared about giant hits.
Also, I think any of the major named bosses should have had some sort of mechanic to them. Instead of just being a damage sponge with hero/villain abilities. Some of the Arch-Nemesis fights could have truly been memorable. And some were downright difficult, but all in all, pretty bland. Just simple mechanics, like if they were about to do Energy Nova, players had to go hide behind something, or anything like that. As for raids, I'd personally rather see map wide events over instanced raids.
As for TSW, that sounds terrible. That is taking a single mechanic, and running with it to extremes just to make it seem like the fight is difficult. Horrible horrible design. And I'd never want to see that in CoT. If CoT did have rage, I would want it to be strict enough where people just can't afk in a fight. Or basically go 100% survivability, and turn what should be a 5-10 minute fight, into an hour long one just because its the most guaranteed way to beat it.
I'm for holy trinity, and asymmetry. Either or works fine for me, as long as the bosses have some sort of mechanic that make me think. Guild Wars 2 had horrific battles at first, but they certainly have grown with the asymmetry and added a lot of really neat mechanics. So it is definitely possible.
As for "casuals" (Not used as derogatory term), I agree that sometimes you just want to smack an instanced and have some fun. I'm 100% for that, I just want to make sure there is some challenging content that makes me think during combat, not just mash the most powerful button available.
Considering creating a boss mechanic thread to see what things we can think of.
If it hasn't already been posted, I'm interested in seeing what people throw against the wall to see what sticks.
Like this!
[img]http://i.imgur.com/cq3AtDO.gif[/img]
Edit: It fills me with a special kind of joy to find the exact vague image I was looking for.
Rage timers are ... DPS Checks.
You must do THIS MUCH Damage in THIS AMOUNT of Time or you'll simply FAIL.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
If MWM implements rage timers, which I hope is very sparingly, then I seriously hope they justify it better than what essentially is the standard "you took too long so I'm gonna hulk out and smash your heads in" justification.
Yeah... I'm not liking this idea of rage timers unless used very, very sparingly as blacke4dawn says. It sounds a little too much like "you must fight this boss in this one way only." Likewise, I'll never be a fan of any encounter that requires a specific mix of ATs or power sets. I would hope one of the best parts of our old game that will see a resurrection in CoT is the idea that you can run any content with any mix of characters.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I could see value in a few rage timers to add flavor to lore-appropriate bosses, but only if there's a way to counter each one - maybe a temp power, or a set of conditions that the players can trigger to de-rage the boss, such as immobilizing it for ten seconds or making it move to a certain debuffing location built in to the map. These conditions should also be matched to the nature of the boss, grounded in lore, and explained in-game. If a boss is designed with no de-rage mechanic, then I'd like to see it suffer a massive weakness in exchange for its rage damage (or whatever buff the rage timer gives them). For example, perhaps the boss becomes unable to use its ranged attacks, or gets stunned when attacked from above.
Another way of saying it - I'd like any rage timers to simply mean a change in tactics, not an automatic loss.
+1 to blacke4dawn and Cinnder. Timers fix tactics too much. As an occasional novelty they'd be fine, but not as the general, or even a common, type of boss.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I'm too tired, so I'm going to be blunt, if it sounds crude, I apologize.
However, I'd say that sounds pretty terrible. There needs to be some sort of set variables to a boss changing their tactics. A random boss here and there would be fine. But if it is random,unless the bosses are literally so easy it doesn't matter, you're looking at mass RNG fights. Meaning, you could quite often be screwed in a fight, simply because the dice roll of their tactics.
I believe I understand what you want, but it is better on paper than reality.
Nah, not crude :). I'll mention two things that I didn't in my former post to clarify, though.
CoH didn't use timers much, and I personally enjoyed the boss fights for the most part. Also, what I didn't say is that there are other ways to keep a fight from being just mass RNG fights than timers---MWM has already mentioned some of these other options here and there, mostly in posts about using Momentum.
I wasn't clear in that what I meant was that I wouldn't want timers to be the ONLY or the MAIN mechanic, but in most cases there should be a mechanic other than just a DPS RNG fights--though once in a while even these can be fun.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Yeah but CoX bosses didn't have mechanics at all. CoX had only spank and tank, there was nothing else to it.
Granted, I think I only did 1 or 2 trials (They were kinda after my days), but I don't really remember them having anything memorable either.
Although very few task force AVs (bosses) below level 45 had memorable mechanics beyond a few special attacks, I actually liked that about CoH. I think it encouraged more players to give that content a try without worrying about reading "dungeon guides" or being afraid to join a pick-up group (PUG).
I remember all of the trial AVs having at least one "mechanic", though I realize we could be working off of different definitions of that word. Some involved temp powers, mini-rage timers, avoiding location AoE killzones, keeping summons under control, and triggering events to buff the players (without which, they would die or be unable to harm the boss). Most trials also had time limits on several of their phases, including the final AV. In some cases, the trial put less emphasis on the final AV and more into the overall sequence of events - I tended to see these as if the trial itself was the boss, along with its mechanics as a whole.
Back to the higher-level, more traditional task forces:
> Kahn TF's Reichsman brought in other AVs to the fight and would repeatedly go nearly invulnerable until a temp power was used on him...though it seemed to work poorly at times or give no indication it was working. The summoned AV often stayed at range and seemed to ignore a tank.
> The ITF could be considered to have mechanics involving the interactions of the final 3 AVs and how to separate them or otherwise trick them into being more easily defeated. Players could try several methods to avoid the AV-death stun.
> Lady Grey's two final AVs were surrounded by masses of Rikti with plenty of ranged stuns, too many to effectively "tank", so non-defensive characters had to work around that problem.
> Statesman TF had some mechanics built into the buffing towers at the end, but also encouraged some thought (even if it was just oriented toward careful tanking/pulling) during the prior multi-AV fight.
Of course, some non-trial mechanics could be overcome with enough damage/buffs/debuffs, and commonly were on a fully-IO'd team or after Incarnate abilities were added to the game. Some might call this a problem, but I'm fine with content that drops out of the top tier of challenge over time.
I think the overall pattern, once incarnate trials were added to the game, is worth using in CoT's design. Low level bosses with no mechanics to encourage PUGs, higher level bosses with one or two basic mechanics, and trial bosses with a range of different mechanics. When possible, the mechanics should allow several tactics to work against them, so that most team compositions have at least one viable method to win.
Aye, what Scott said.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Awesome post, Scott. + over 9,000
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I liked the mechanics they originally had in the respec trial. Then they spaced out the spawns so much I spent most of the trial with /em newspaper.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
"When everyone's super, no one will be" - Syndrome (The Incredibles Movie)
Looks like I may be holding a minority position yet again in the forum. Oh well, at least I hope it adds to the discussion. While I can't say I am a huge proponent of boss rage timers per se, I get and agree with Klaleara's point when it came to CoH. There's something fundamentally "wrong" when people aren't required to understand the basic mechanics of their AT (or even be present) and yet consistently enjoy the fruits of victory. That happened all too often in CoH. IMHO, the downside of this holy grail of "anything goes" team composition (and skill) wise is that it ultimately led to too much of a dumbing down of bosses to allow for that.
Say what you will about the trinity (and I'm not certainly not a proponent of forcing that on CoT players either) and rage timers but at least it was an attempt at saying "do nothing or do something stupid and you may not be able to recover from that". Maybe it's just me. But while this multiple paths to victory thing sounds great on the surface, I don't get how you accommodate that without making a bad situation even worse in terms of challenging and rewarding individual players within a team in an appropriate way.
With multiple routes, I agree that it is only great on the surface. I'd hate to say it, but it would be a waste of time for the devs to really do that for a bunch of bosses.
The reasons I say this, I've seen several MMO's attempt this. GW2 added paths, Wildstar had a bunch of stuff that had different routes. And know what happened? Everyone found the quickest, easiest ways, and that was the only way to do it from there on out.
People will always find the quickest, most efficient way, and that will become the only way people to do it. You won't find groups who even want to try the other routes.
RIP the Oregon Trail scenario thing in Wildstar. Always wanted to try the other paths.
Well the respec trial was presumably in the game to help players earn a way to correct their badly built characters. So technically the trial had to be easy enough that even the most gimpy group of players could succeed. This lead to it being nerfed down almost to the point that players could take naps between the waves at the end.
I don't necessarily fault the mechanics behind having the "waves" of enemies. I'm just suggesting that using that mechanic for the "respec trial" was probably not a good decision overall. They maybe should have applied that concept to some other trial that didn't need to be, almost by definition, super easy to accomplish.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Let's not forget that if you had not taken a vertical travel power, just getting to the door was a real pain, assuming you didn't have a teammate who could Recall you.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I see what Khaleara is saying. Many bosses were not very tactical. I disagree with rage timers being the correct way or rather only way to treat that. The most heroic I ever felt was fighting Countess Crey. I was on my Sonic/NRG blaster and was the last one left standing with her at over half. It took a long ass time but I beat her down. If she had a rage timer we'd have been team wiped and had to start over. I'm all for intuitive dynamics for boss fights. There's a place for a rage timer but it's not the only dynamic to consider.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
And only one travel power wasn't vertical.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]