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WISH LIST 16: Giant Enemies

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AJSB
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WISH LIST 16: Giant Enemies

What makes superhero MMO's structurally different than fantasy or scifi games is the feeling that the players are powerful. They are fast, they can defeat many enemies, they have powerful control abilities, and their enemies are also very powerful. One of the easiest ways to show power to gamers is by size. Make the players fight behemoths, and make these behemoths enormous. And by enormous, I mean gigantic. Make them rival the skyscrapers that they walk in between. Make their mouths large enough to swallow a train. Make the players look like bees flying around them.

Is that it? Do you just take an ogre, paste it in paint, move the mouse to the corner, and drag the corner till it's the size of a skyscraper? No! You have to give the enemy features unique to giant enemies to equip them to fight large groups of players, allow the players to engage in a siege style of fighting where you wear it down gradually, and preserve the feeling of being powerful while still making it challenging with a new control model.

1) Multiple actions at once.
I remember this encounter in Guild Wars 2 where a group of maybe 20 players were fighting a giant in a cave. The giant would stomp and swing his club at different players. He would pursue one player for a little bit, the player would frantically dodge maybe five attacks, and the giant would move on to the next enemy. Why didn't the giant have two clubs? Why didn't he attack one character with his club, but the lash out with a random stomp at anyone he gets to close? Why didn't he try to start a cave in? Giant enemies should be able to to target multiple enemies and multitask. I'm not talking about AoE actions. I mean the robot attacks the ranged dps with a eye laser while he pushes the tank back with a powerful punch. That is not one and then the other. That is is simultaneously. Having massive enemies able to have less predictable attacks would make battles more interesting.

2) Multiple hitboxes
You know...that giant's club was really annoying. I wish I could have broken it. Wouldn't that be nice? The way you allow players to take away a bosses special abilities is you let them target that part of the boss. It's not just limited to attacks. You can let them target legs or rocket packs that would limit a bosses movement. If you target the eyes then it would flay wildly at a substantial damage reduction. A damaged reactor would increase the cool down on all of it's abilities. This would create a siege style of boss fight where the best way to take down a giant creature is not to button mash it's hit points into oblivion, but to wear down the enemy strategically.

3) Large group control
Most bosses in MMO's I've played are immune to control abilities. This is understandable, because the devs don't want an important battle to sidetracked by a group of all controllers spamming knockdowns till the computer rage quits. Yes, I have seen a compy rage quit. It was very traumatic. I don't want to talk about it, so don't ask :P. This can be very frustrating though, as control based characters have based their characters on manipulating the enemy, and robs players of their feeling of power. To ameliorate this, I purpose that these powerful enemies have a special control system. Each control power that hits would count as a fraction of a control power. Once that fraction reaches one, the boss has a control effect on him. Control fractions fade within three to five seconds of each other according to the power of the characters and boss. So a, powerful open world boss designed for 20 people may have a fraction value of 1/10th. This means that if 10 control abilities are used within five seconds of each other, then the boss is floated in the air for a few moments or something. Save up those control abilities till everyone is ready!

What do you think?

Gangrel
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For the first one, if it is

For the first one, if it is the same Troll that I am thinking of, I believe he *does* start a cave in, so that is why he normally gets pulled to outside the cave.

Number 2 is a cool addition, and I now that various games that have done something similar for various bosses at one time or another.

The 3rd part is what Wildstar is using... its called Interrupt armour, and ALL classes have access to some form of interrupt.

So for a mob that has Interrupt Armour rating of 1, you need 2 interrupts to go off in a short period of time to be able to stun/control the mob... (WOOHOO BONUS DAMAGE TIME!).

After a short period of time (ie when the stun runs out), the Interrupt Armour value goes back to its original value.

This means that you need to coordinate your interrupts for best effect, so spamming them constantly is not necessarily a valid tactic.

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4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Darth Fez
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These are all examples of

These are all examples of different boss mechanics that have very little to do with the game's theme. (I'll use 'big bad' in place of 'boss' since bosses were an actual type/level of enemy in CoH.)

1. If a big bad attacks multiple targets, you typically needs two or three tanks to soak them up. Or someone else tough enough to do it, possibly with a dedicated healer. In the event of multiple big bads or additional enemies, kiting may be an option. If the big bad has a special attack against certain positioning* then people must either avoid it or have some other means to mitigate or counter (usually healing) that damage. For attacks against the entire team, such as cave-ins or missile salvos**, there would need to be some mechanic to mitigate or avoid most or all of that damage.

2. If certain aspects of the big bad (usually weapons or defenses) can be targeted, then this is an indication that they are intended to be destroyed in order to defeat the big bad. This is typically not a case of 'can', but one of 'must'. Perception is important, so it can certainly add something to a fight if the big bad is a large lump of hit points with dollops of smaller hit points spread about it.***

3. As I've posted elsewhere, I agree that debuffers should be able to influence the fight and to do so without needing to mash their debuff powers on cooldown. I also agree that they should not be able to reduce the big bad (or even bosses and elite bosses, really) to helplessness. For a team, reducing the big bad's accuracy, damage, attack speed, etc. by 10% or so should make a huge difference.

Comments: As anyone who has experience with raids will likely know, teams with sufficient skill or which sufficiently outclass the content can essentially ignore certain mechanics. E.g., if the healing output for the team is high enough they can continue to attack rather than needing to defend against the big bad's missiles. Similarly, elements of the fight which are included to make it easier (e.g. destroying one or more weapons or defenses) can be ignored in favor of taking down the big bad that much quicker.



* 'Too close' does not work because someone always has to get close. See the so-called "ranged tanking" in SWTOR.
** See the fight against Annihilation Droid XRR-3 in SWTOR for an example. There are undoubtedly examples available from WoW and other MMOs, as well.
*** Rather like a spotted dick (sauce not provided, void where prohibited).

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Comicsluvr
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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

Comments: As anyone who has experience with raids will likely know, teams with sufficient skill or which sufficiently outclass the content can essentially ignore certain mechanics. E.g., if the healing output for the team is high enough they can continue to attack rather than needing to defend against the big bad's missiles. Similarly, elements of the fight which are included to make it easier (e.g. destroying one or more weapons or defenses) can be ignored in favor of taking down the big bad that much quicker.

I think that keeping this part is important. One of the things I liked about CoX is that there were several different ways to defeat an opponent. I was on teams that were all tanks that simply out-lasted enemies. All-controller teams that locked down the opponent. All-debuff teams that reduced targets to useless targets. High-damage teams that simply destroyed enemies before they could do enough damage. Healing-heavy teams that generated green faster than the red poured in.

I firmly believe that having these kinds of options is important.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...