Prod

This comment is a mistake. Being extremely quick to react comes with extreme understanding and skill. I see fast gameplay as just one option in Blizzards bag for challenging and fun encounters. Also keep in mind how slowed down the pace of the game is by the global cooldown.

 

Jebraltar

Up to four people graved at once means that even with just six healers, you have four MT healers, one OT healer (assuming you use that strat) and one Watery Grave healer. It's extremely unlikely, and you can have that one person spam heals to keep the tank up. Of course, if you have only six healers on Morogrim, your raid is stacked in entirely the wrong fashion anyway, and two or three healers should be able to handle the tank for an emergency. (There's no reason to have dedicated raid healers in that fight - a few healers should be specified for healing the raid back up after quakes, but MT healing is the primary job of every single available healer.)

You can get gear before you do the fight such that your tanks are able, buffed appropriately, to survive double Windfury, Frost Shock can be completely negated by a Shaman in the tank group...definitely a lot of spike damage, but you can set it up so that your tank cannot be one-shotted.

You can heal through gaze on the Sanguinar tank, painful as it is. The Sanguinar tank running Sanguinar into the central area would be straight bad play.

Prince Malchezzar couldn't corner you effectively pre-30%, which is when an enrage timer starts. It's intended behaviour.

I know that it's been pretty fashionable to complain about all of these encounters being inescapably random, but these are not encounters where the boss literally just randomly one-shots you.

 

◊ Quigon

The first mark took slightly longer than the others - it should be less than 100 marks (I thought 98).

Lady blameaux visually casted faster even when Zeliak was still up after 20 minutes.

Zeliak casts notably faster right at 20 minutes, and will not even if he is the last horseman standing under 20 minutes. We had a timer that counted the enrage down to the second just for this purpose. We did kill them at least twice I believe under 20 minutes and noticed no enrage. It was also reported that thane casted meteors nonstop.

It was definitely meant to be a soft-enrage for taking too long. Similar to Lady Vashj's enrage.

As to Jebraltar:
Everything in this game is killable - thats why so many guilds are done with the content entirely. That however does not mean the content was not too random, or was not completely out of tune for a long time. There is randomness in everything, and usually a counter to it. Something shouldn't have to be one-shot-instagib-unfair death random to be stupid random. I could list a dozen things I find infuriating and random, but I'm sure they'll each be shot down as passable. What is the point in supporting randomness in this game? It sucks in every aspect.
Loot, resist gear, boss abilities - especially when coupled.
Decouple random abilities might go a long ways.

 

Grizlor

Incorrect sir. his frost shock has a 12ish second cooldown, such that even with guardian totems you can't get every one of them. Conversely, you can get every shock blast on Vashj even without Guardian Totems.

 

◊ Kalman

The last mob standing did NOT enrage regardless of mark. This is one of those persistent myths that was never true.

Basically, enrage on 4H simply removed the cooldown on a given mobs special ability. Zeliek spamming Holy Wrath was the easiest to deal with, since it was completely controllable. Blameaux wasn't that bad, since you had a large portion of the room you could kite in by that point, but it was *not* fun to try and DPS her down, enraged, as melee - fortunately she was at around 4% the time we saw her enrage. Thane enrage isn't something we ever saw, but I'd assume Meteor spam. And presumably Mograine's enrage would be Righteous Fire spam, which is a truly terrifying thought.

 

◊ Kyth

It's not the only definition of skill however. It's very limiting to think the only way an encounter can be harder is to make people press buttons faster and that a global cooldown dooms you to forever being an "unskilled game." Pressing buttons fast is neat, yes. Making fast decisions, or coordinating via sheer experience with 5 other people without the time to communicate what to do is also neat.

Maybe if you think the FPS is the height of all gameplay and nothing more challenging can exist in any other dimension.

Part of the problem is WoW plays a lot like 25 independent people who happen to be in a raid together. The player interactions are weak at best, and few (?any?) skills change to be fundamentally different (other than just "I hit for more!") when you're in a group of people, so you can't ever realy depend on someone other than "they didn't fuck up their independent piece, so now I can go do my independent piece." (core passing on Vashj, and mage FN/AE coordination, btw, are two examples of where coordination *does* matter -- neither have anything to do with pressing buttons quickly, both have a lot to do with the skill of your guild at working together.)

Also there's very little need to think ahead, it's sufficient for the most part to just wait for something to happen and then react to it, or positioning is fairly static and set up ahead of time.

The limitation of no collision detection reduces the amount of challenge they can put into the physical layout, since you need to rely solely on the environment to create problems. But even then there is more that they can do that isn't to the level of a mario platform jumper but still introduces more need to think ahead and use the space around you.


None of that has anything to do with the global cooldown, and its presence or absence has little to do with the "skill" involved.

 

◊ Quigon

Kyth,
You had me 100% up until the collision theory part. It was one of the most annoying parts of EQ - and isn't as romantic as it sounds.

I think however, that you would be able to expound another idea that brought skill back into play while still being novel. Edit: I almost added a comment about Mario Galaxy here before even reading your platformer comment.

I personally think the game truly lacks a three dimensional fight for starters. Another issue would be to make fights difficult again without relying on overlapping RNG timers - and tune according to that.

Perhaps take the burden off DPS and Healing and put it more on movement for a few fights. Many of the best fights in WoW's history are not DPS or Healing intensive outside of brief moments of brilliance.

 

Madara

This was an interesting point I wanted to comment on, although I realize its off the main topic. A few other mmo's, im going to use ffxi as the example, somewhat succeed in enhancing the group interaction element that you are somewhat describing here. As you said when you join a party or a raid in wow, nothing you do apart from healing someone else, tanking for someone else, or dpsing someone's mob is actually combining with what anyone else is doing.

Games like ffxi implement game mechanics that (I forget the name of them atm) when two players use certain abilities at the same time or in succession, depending on what they are they combine to deal extra damage to the mob (I think they're called skill chains but I may be mistaken). This could work for healing or dps if they ever considered using it in wow. Consider if a mage spell combined with a warlock spell, and if used together correctly added an extra damage element on top of the two seperate spells. Or if a combo chain including a flash heal succeeded by a chain heal succeeded by randomhealx ended in an extra short term buff on the target to reward trying to chain these spells together.

Obviously would take tuning and experimenting, but it would offer something different to the raid scheme instead of 25 people doing 25 seperate things. But if adding elements like this to raiding or the group setting in general allowed bonuses to people who go the extra mile to work together and coordinate abilities with the other members instead of straight button mashing or individual spell/ability rotations this could open more opportunities in general PvE experiences.

Not sure how well this would work in WoW's form of PvE considering its quite different from other's of its genre, but it would be interesting to see the developers trying to implement new ways to encourage group participation and synergy that would also award the skill of the players for being able to pull such elements off.

 

• Falk

The discussion about player collision jostled my memory somewhat... I always thought that a fun mechanic would be to expand on the Thaddius Jump (tm) and make platforming a central part of an encounter.

Picture if you will, a chasm across which a necessary lever (symbolically, not literally a lever - make it a mind control orb or Ossirian pylon or Vashj tainted core or whatever) needs to be thrown in order to advance the encounter or prevent a wipe. A semi-random series of columns spring up across the chasm, with arrows indicating which directions the columns will start to move when stepped on, color coded to signify if they'll ascend, descend, or eventually crumble (also when stepped on)

The 'start area' includes an environment-given buff that increases your movement speed to a flat +80% (so that hunters/druids/rogues/whatever don't have an innate advantage on this part of the fight)

Heck, you could make it even more complex by making some of the columns react to buttons on the raid's side of the chasm, making the job a 2-man affair with serious coordination. Give the necessary lever a 5-minute debuff that prevents you from getting the speed buff again to increase the number of people who have to run the gauntlet.

 

◊ Kyth

Ya, I played EQ for years too. A game where you don't have to shrink after each rez and where ogres can't block the path to emp is awesome. I just meant it was an example of how the engine is making it slightly harder on the encounter designer to introduce interaction-based raid design elements, they *have* to rely far more on the physical environment (although I think they haven't done much of this) if they want to truly introduce terrain/environment as a challenge in a fight. If you want to limit the number of players in an area you have to come up with an artificial limitation -- you can't just make the physical dimensions smaller.

But as I said I think there is definitely opportunities there, particularly in the fairly unexplored areas of "planning ahead" and "player interaction" realms. The game is very reactive/solo right now, which I think is why people focus on why it is not "skill" since you're limited by the 1.5 second gcd.


I still think the randomness elements might be the first forays into a different kind of skill-based fight: one where "recovering" and "compensating" is the skill.

What struck me most about moving to WoW was how fast and almost inevitable wipes were once that critical error was made (usually the MT death.) In EQ, at least the era I played (up through early PoP), part of what marked a good raid force was being able to accommodate tragedy. Many of my game-defining experiences there were the fights where we pulled through despite bad luck through people moving out of their comfort zone and adapting to deal with some very very unexpected situation.

(and as I said, my dream is WoW becoming more than you + 24 people soloing the same boss simultaneously, and/or a turn to more planning/strategic bosses versus reactive/tactical.)



I fully agree with your comments about a true 3D encounter, along with more movement/positioning-oriented fights as well. Lots of untapped potential that works on skills where the existence of the gcd is irrelevant.

 

• Chicken

The Illidari Council enrage is actually survivable by the standards of berserk timers. It "just" doubles their damage output, which means that as long as people are spread out you can last for a minute or two after it happens. It mostly means that anyone targetted by Deadly Poison is (practically) guaranteed a death, and the Flamestrike is going to be pretty killer on most people too.

 

Jebraltar

Random loot and the functioning of resists in this game are horrible. I'm just objecting to the notion that those are guaranteed wipes.

I do think that bosses need some random abilities, since bosses can end up too simple without it. At the same time, I do agree that some are stupid - abilities on random timers, for instance, or abilities that can "whiff" like Prince's Infernals.

Apologies. Two grounding totems should work, though.

 

Vandermonde

I'm a bit nervous about the idea of making platforming challenges too tricky in what is almost undeniably a bad engine for platforming. There probably is some room to make more intricate movement based challenges without it feeling like you're fighting the interface instead of the boss. The tears of the goddess for example hint that you could give people a sprint/dash toy, or a teleport or something to give you more choices for an encounter.

I do think that more emphasis on movement and movement abilities is one of the few areas in which an mmo developer could really outdo wow and tempt me away.

 

PSGarak

You could simulate the challenges involved with collision detection by, eg, giving everyone in the raid a debuff that pulses every two seconds, damaging players within collision range. It's not an absolute thing, and depending on tuning it allows you a degree of flexibility in ignoring other player locations, for a short time, at a cost. Hrm... that would be interesting: design one particular fight with pseudo-collision and a much more populated geography, like chambers connected by crowded gates that the raid has to move between.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

• Playered

Well look at Astromancer, imagen if she cast the bomb on multiple people and with a shorter cooldown, thats going to be somewhat lethal to people who dont pay attention (and their raid), especially if they stimulate a reason for people to usually stay grouped up.

They already have some simplistic designs that have potential to be pretty intense on the raid that holds 'unworthy' people back if they just expanded on them.

 

Krazen

RSTS abilities in themselves are fine. RSTS abilities in which some classes are far better suited to absorb said abilities are the problem. A mage vs a rogue getting Fel Raged on Bloodboil is the simplest, and best, example.

 

aleyro

I disagree with both of these points.

On a macro level, "winning" a raid is all about the coordinating the holy trinity ( tanking, healing, and damage). the exact right amount of heals to keep the tank alive, the right amount of threat to maintain aggro, and the right amount of DPS to not pull aggro. At the "raid-wide" scale, coordinating those three things is the difference between winning, or not. The same holds true at the micro level; intentionally delaying an attack by one second, choosing exactly which heal, knowing exactly how much rage to use, based on who else is alive at a given point. There are also plenty of synergies between abilities that allow a further level of coordination.

In terms of "thinking ahead", again, the greatest determinant of success, on a macro level, is group configuration and consumable utilization. Proper group setup is what enables much of the coordination you mention above, and consumables require extended up-front preperation. Again, on a micro level, knowing exactly when to pop your short and long cooldowns is critical (especially if your trying to synchronize your abilities with others).

I often lead raids (or assist leading raids) for my guild, which is just starting T5. "Coordination" and "thinking ahead" is 110% of what I do.

If you're not satisfied with these two aspects of the game, then either a.) you've progressed significantly beyond where i'm at, and find this level of coordination and planning trivial, or b.) you've never participated in the "leading" of a raid, and have only raided as an "individual contributor".

If its A, then I apologize for speaking out of line- if it's B, then consider leading a raid one night, its a whole other game.

 

• Falk

Latency is (and always has been) an issue with collision detection. The problem would also manifest when you have to look out vs each other as in this case, especially if there was a frantic atmosphere of needing to squeeze the entire raid through the gate in Y time to avoid X from happening.

Heigan = good. Thaddius was... manageable even with latency and it being a similar mechanic to what's being seen above, but even that required modification to the placement strategy.

 

Pyros

I hope one of the Sunwell boss(maybe the daek naaru) is inspired by Portal. Pops up teleporter around the room that are linked to each other and you have to move really fast between them to do specific things. Maybe even have a MC type thing for one player and he's the one popping portals. But really Portal is a pretty good idea of what could be used in a mmo to make an encounter fun but not another tank and spank. Maybe it's just because I loved the damn game tho.

 

gatzu.

What you describe as coordinating the holy trinity is something that should almost be taken for granted. Your description is basically a trivial tank and spank fight if thats all there is to it.

Truly fun and hard encounters were more about multiple groups of moving parts working in symphony to complete an encounter. The best example from TBC encounters is probably the Kael fight where you have multiple mobs up all with special abilities that need to be dealt with. Or phase 2 vash where you have several different mobs spawning and also having to take care of the cores. Sadly, most BT and Hyjal encounters lack this. Which is what in my opinion makes them far easier and less enjoyable zones then Naxx or even Kael and Vash.

 

Metrosexuelf

Although I did mention the global cooldown as having an effect on the 'skill' cap of WoW I didn't say it was the only thing. Situational reaction and awareness are obviously important but, as I said, I really don't think they are going to start designing encounters that push the extreme limits of such awareness that require you to monitor and react to a possible dozen or so things that can wipe the raid. This is still an MMO... not only that... it's a more casual/soccer mom MMO. It's my opinion that RTS games like Warcraft 3 (played at it's high end in competitions) and even WoW Arena (again at it's highest level) will always require more skill and reaction than any PvE raid boss encounter you will ever see designed for this game.

I loathe to use the word 'skill' when it comes to World of Warcraft if we're defining it as roughly the same type of 'skill' it takes to hit an MLB pitcher's curveball, perform an appendectomy, or win the Indianapolis 500. My own personal definition is: If I can do it, it doesn't take much skill. Preparation, yes. Knowledge of your class, sure. Organization, of course. Pure 'skill?' Debatable depending on how you define it. I will be honest, my alliance guild imploded before doing Four Horseman, Sapphiron, or Kel'Thuzad but other than that I've sucesfully done every other raid boss encounter since release. Pre-TBC probably not in the upper echelon, post-TBC certainly near the top.

There is a fine line between designing an encounter to require more 'skill' or reactionary reflexes from players and just making it absurdly frustrating and overtuned. I mean... it sure would take tons of skill if Brutalicus hit for 30k pre-mitigation and the floor to his room randomly vanished in sectors dropping people to their death every 5 seconds while something akin to pre-nerf Wrath of the Astromancer bounces back and forth at an exponential rate... but they aren't going to do that.

Personally I would like to see more fights like Kael'thas, Maulgar, etc. They weren't insanely hard skill checks but they were creative and required a lot from many people in the raid in terms of filling roles and making sure things got done. Patchwerk was a skill and gear check of sorts but it wasn't very fun.

 

Ellyh

I also have great issues with "skill" being twitch reaction based. The reason is simply latency. As it is playing from NZ I am almost guaranteed to take at least one tick of damage from an aoe effect because of the transmission and reaction time. In addition the game engine is not accurate enough to have quick reaction instagib effects. The fundamental problem with precise positioning mobile fights was perfectly illustrated in a pvp match my roomie and I took part in a couple of days ago. We are in the same BG and riding to the objective but both of us saw the other as about 20 yards behind the other simply because of the round trip delay. This lack of trustworthiness in the visual display was one of the major challenges (and frustrations) of the Heigen dance. If we can't trust what we see on the screen in front of us is in fact reality how on earth can we play "correctly" if we have to have that information and react within a second.

This coupled with the aforementioned GCD is the reason behind the slow pace of of all gib effects that rely on positioning or reaction time. For any ability that could 1 shot a player you need to realistically allow 2.5 seconds of reaction time. This is broken down into a somewhat overlapping 1.5 second for latency and reaction time + 1.5 seconds for the GCD to clear if it requires the use of a preventative skill. None of the fights I have seen so far have a timing that is shorter than this.

What this means is that there is a hardwired limit to how twitchy they can make the game. If it's twitchyness is seriously challenging to the very best players with sub 100ms ping then it will be literally impossible for slightly slower players who are at the wrong end of 400+ latency. This is unacceptable unless you are happy with excluding a significant % of your player base from being capable of completing the content.

This leaves only gear checks of dps/healing/tanking and what can be called "logistics" and "choreography" where you have to have 7 tanks or 3 priests for MC or perform a long string of abilities in the right order at the right time. I sincerely don't think that it is possible to actually require much more "skill" at playing the game beyond the ability to be trained to push button A when B happens during C phase while standing in position D.

 

Nuveena

Fatal Attraction?

 

kervi

I had frapsed video where I die to invisible void zone. Nothing ever shows up in screen, I just take damage and blam, dead. That pretty much killed arguing about people dieing to void zones due to incompetence. Timers helped to some extent in that encounter.

IMO randomness should be limited in some way, running in fear 3 times over same doomfire while having grip, without fear breaking due to damage is too much for most of classes. Of course it can be argued that one should never be so close to doomfires when fear is incoming, but sometimes it just cant be easily avoided. Also getting doomfire and air burst after that into lake is pretty hard to survive. RSTS elements often make encounters more interesting, otherwise most encounters would be real boring on 300th time or so.

In classic WoW blizzard had some sorta "themes" for raids, eg. threat management played big part in most of BWL encounters. Nowadays it doesnt anymore seem much like that, more like one of each kinda boss for each instance. There might be some interesting results if they use more of this approach in WOTLK. Maybe one instance that is filled with guys like kaz'rogal and EOS p2, though casters will hate it big time.

 

Prod

And I'm of the opinion that having grip and running into doomfire is entirely your fault. Something random that is bad for raiding may be Gurtogg VS Zuljin. As far as I know Zuljins fixate does a fixed amount of damage, while Gurtogg can get a lucky string of crits immediatly on you. But concerning Archimonde you can 1) decurse better ((I can usually get it off people before it ticks)) 2) watch the giant fear timer 3) get a pvp trinket 4) learn to time your totems to break fear instantly if you have access to a good shaman.