New Boss Mechanics

RiddleDiddle

How about new boss mechanics that do not focus on nuking and DPSing the *bobba* out of them? How about a mechanic where you have to activate certain things that damages the boss, and i do not mean a mechanic that makes the boss vulnerable.
I mean an actual mechanic that makes your whole group do stuff than the regular stuff you normally do a.k.a. DD is nuking, Tank just stands and blocks and Healer just heals/dps.

Would make it a lot more fun if some bosses have a WHOLE different mechanic than all the bosses we have now.

Give your opinion.

jeedrzej

Check CoS and RoM. You will find your mechanics

Enslaved

How about a new mechanics where we get to have a tea party with boss instead of just dpsing the holy crap out of it?

RiddleDiddle

Enslaved wrote: »

How about a new mechanics where we get to have a tea party with boss instead of just dpsing the holy crap out of it?

That's kinda passive aggressive

redspecter23

Some of these things are in place but are implemented so poorly that they make the "hard mode" easier than the standard mode. I'm looking at Spindleclutch 2 and Darkshade 2 specifically here.

I do get what you're saying though. Having mechanics that reward skills other than max dps would be welcome but we play in a world where high dps wins the fights faster while helping avoid mechanics. You use the bare minimum of survival strategy. Just enough to ensure you don't die repeatedly. Sometimes this means no tank or no healer... because high dps is your route to victory in nearly every situation once you have your bare minimum mitigation factored in. ZoS has just recently cemented this strategy as they raised the health of many bosses, making high dps and mechanics avoidance even more important for smooth runs.

RiddleDiddle

redspecter23 wrote: »

Some of these things are in place but are implemented so poorly that they make the "hard mode" easier than the standard mode. I'm looking at Spindleclutch 2 and Darkshade 2 specifically here.

I do get what you're saying though. Having mechanics that reward skills other than max dps would be welcome but we play in a world where high dps wins the fights faster while helping avoid mechanics. You use the bare minimum of survival strategy. Just enough to ensure you don't die repeatedly. Sometimes this means no tank or no healer... because high dps is your route to victory in nearly every situation once you have your bare minimum mitigation factored in. ZoS has just recently cemented this strategy as they raised the health of many bosses, making high dps and mechanics avoidance even more important for smooth runs.

But still not high enough, it's a no brainer, most boss fights are, even where you have to avoid something, it's easy TOO easy.
I don't want a no brainer DPS, Tank and Healer fight, i want some in depth boss fights with a meaning.

redspecter23

RiddleDiddle wrote: »

show previous quotes

redspecter23 wrote: »

Some of these things are in place but are implemented so poorly that they make the "hard mode" easier than the standard mode. I'm looking at Spindleclutch 2 and Darkshade 2 specifically here.

I do get what you're saying though. Having mechanics that reward skills other than max dps would be welcome but we play in a world where high dps wins the fights faster while helping avoid mechanics. You use the bare minimum of survival strategy. Just enough to ensure you don't die repeatedly. Sometimes this means no tank or no healer... because high dps is your route to victory in nearly every situation once you have your bare minimum mitigation factored in. ZoS has just recently cemented this strategy as they raised the health of many bosses, making high dps and mechanics avoidance even more important for smooth runs.

But still not high enough, it's a no brainer, most boss fights are, even where you have to avoid something, it's easy TOO easy.
I don't want a no brainer DPS, Tank and Healer fight, i want some in depth boss fights with a meaning.

I think they've saved that for the harder DLC dungeons as the poster above mentioned. The non DLC dungeons seem to be lighter on mechanics on purpose. It's probably for the best so the majority can complete them without too much stress. As more DLC dungeons are added, I think we'll see mechanically difficult fights more often than not. It's just not likely they'll go back and tweak old dungeons much more than they have already.

Enslaved

RiddleDiddle wrote: »

show previous quotes

Enslaved wrote: »

How about a new mechanics where we get to have a tea party with boss instead of just dpsing the holy crap out of it?

That's kinda passive aggressive

Not that tea party lol, real one, with cookies and stuff.

Flameheart

As long as Gamyne Bandu in FG 1 (also called "the noob test") still collects hundreds of PUG scalps a week because of

-blue band connecting 2 players while delivering DoT damage (although the damage isn't that high anymore now with OT)

-chaining down a player while others have to kill at least one shadow (as the shadows have more health now, this became somewhat more difficult, but it is far from not doable)

I am pretty sure, that the usual average-Joe-player would be utterly overchallenged, with even more new and exotic mechanics.

So no, thx, if you wanne keep PUGs as a doable playstyle.

stevepdodson_ESO888

bear with me on this (as I tend to ramble)
on a somewhat unrelated thread, someone posting have a "Gatekeeper" system introduced to test players ability to complete a dungeon...
on that note how about introducing a mechanic/phase in the fight that required the players to keep a group of NPC's alive for a certain amount of time (mechanic requiring a good healer to be in the group) or a phase where you need to limit the amount of time a boss tries to focus/attack attack an NPC (mechanic requiring a good tank)

that way a balanced group is always required in a dungeon

RiddleDiddle

Enslaved wrote: »

show previous quotes

RiddleDiddle wrote: »

Enslaved wrote: »

How about a new mechanics where we get to have a tea party with boss instead of just dpsing the holy crap out of it?

That's kinda passive aggressive

Not that tea party lol, real one, with cookies and stuff.

I was talking about your post, not the teaparty

Mayrael

Would be nice to have some Witcher like bosses, that are running and flying arround, that do something else than just "one shot" anyone except of a tank.

Asardes

Enslaved wrote: »

How about a new mechanics where we get to have a tea party with boss instead of just dpsing the holy crap out of it?

I would like to see Xal-Nur delicately lift a porcelain cup, take a sip and tell stories about his childhood, then break into tears remembering the less happy aspects, with the tank patting his back as he sobs. The healer then concludes that even his digestive woes are in fact caused by an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and proceeds to prescribe him Xanax.

Alagras

Completely agree with you OP and I' m amazed by some answers.

But it's not that bad: as someone said if you look at the latest dungeons they tend to have more original mechanics so we can be reasonably optimistic about future ones.
Planar Inhibitor was nice too, and a few older bosses have original mechanics. In practice it often ends up too easy once you get the tactic, but ideas are good.

Since we're at it why not trying to precise a bit your idea of indirect damage mechanic? Also maybe some people have ideas

vyndral13preub18_ESO

Enslaved wrote: »

How about a new mechanics where we get to have a tea party with boss instead of just dpsing the holy crap out of it?

Awesome let us talk it out! If we have the right skills after the tea party the boss lets us chop off his head for a helm!

Rune_Relic

redspecter23 wrote: »

Some of these things are in place but are implemented so poorly that they make the "hard mode" easier than the standard mode. I'm looking at Spindleclutch 2 and Darkshade 2 specifically here.

I do get what you're saying though. Having mechanics that reward skills other than max dps would be welcome but we play in a world where high dps wins the fights faster while helping avoid mechanics. You use the bare minimum of survival strategy. Just enough to ensure you don't die repeatedly. Sometimes this means no tank or no healer... because high dps is your route to victory in nearly every situation once you have your bare minimum mitigation factored in. ZoS has just recently cemented this strategy as they raised the health of many bosses, making high dps and mechanics avoidance even more important for smooth runs.

QFT....why play the mechanics.....why even have mechanics....if you can just DD bypass all of them ?
Tanks and healers dont get that luxury.
There TTK is much longer so mechanics are unavoidable.

Perhaps that is fundamentally why there is so many DD and nobody can find a tank or healer.

inf.toniceb17_ESO

Truth is that if you make dungeons even slightly harder the majority will simply stop playing those dungeons so we'll have noone to play with. Even in game's current state i meet 5-7k dps DDs, tanks with no taunt and healers with vigor and/or blood altar who are unable to do things as simple as pressing a button once in a while practicly every day. So no thank you. We already have things like SoH dungeons that nobody plays. I wander why i even bought that DLC...

Doctordarkspawn

jeedrzej wrote: »

Check CoS and RoM. You will find your mechanics

Which only needed to be made because Wrobel removed the things that kept people from faceroll nuking, then made them impossible to re-impliment.

And even then the design suffers from the effort put in to make them non-nukable.

In fact, quite frankly if we design PVE as a whole like those dungeons you will kill what little want to do dungeons is left after One Tamriel artificially extended the length of boss and trash fights to please 1% of the playerbase.

Asardes

As an experienced player that actually wants to understand and play by dungeon mechanics I would have liked to see new mechanics at least in the veteran version of the old dungeons. At least buffing the bosses has made paying attention to the existing mechanics necessary now. Now you can't simply out DPS Droda's healing ray, you can't burn the Mad Architect so fast that he doesn't make the tube/bubble, you have to actually roll back from the Dreugh King ground AoE and when Neidir charges you have to block or you get killed instantly.

I was glad when SotH came out but I was disappointed when I saw that few people actually wanted to play, and many of those who wanted to play did not pay any attention to the mechanics, imagining they can just "burn trough" them. Some are simply too dumb to play by the mechanics even after I explain them at length. For example I had a group one evening in VRoM where the healer always released at least 2 wamasus, though I explained to him every time that only one has to be released, while the DDs were moving the spice to random direction, although I had told him to look where the spring actually appears. Or people trying to beam Dranos Valedor repeatedly while his bar was solid yellow despite the fact I explained to him the boss is invulnerable and they need to kill the adds and collect the essence to make him take damage again. Not to mention people that wandered aimlessly in the labyrinth, went on moving after the lights went off at Velidreth. Simply failing each and every mechanic despite being fully explained what to do, and dying to it quite a few times. If they make more complicated mechanics they will lose most of their audience, because the average is in deed very low

Rune_Relic

@Asardes
You mean....
...intelligent gameplay (puzzle) vs gorilla with big club gameplay (DPS race).

TBH I dont think we should be focusing on either of those.
Anything other than a DD cant do one.
Many people just want to hit stuff......and dont want to be a tactical chess master at the same time.
Both I think are a bit of a red herring.

Ideally a boss would treat a tank one way.
Ideally a boss would treat a healer another way.
Ideally a boss would treat a DD another way.

In other words bosses..or the dungeons at least...need to react differently to the players builds.
Perhaps boss enters tank mode with 4x DD or DD mode with 4x tanks.
Even here a build could be a fire DD and a frost tank....so pidgeon holing by role isnt necessarily the answer either.
I dont know......needs much more thought.

[EDIT: perhaps when entering an instance the dungeon shoudl gather and combine all player stats.....and then tailor the boss/dungeon to match those stats ? ie the BOSS could change the DD:tank:Healer ratio. Each boss having their own unqiue healing/damage/tanking skills that are scaled accordingly. In effect...the boss becomes a combination of the player builds that enter..or even the exact opposite of a combined player build (and thus a nemesis)]
@ZOS_Finn

Asardes

If the boss is not tanked he usually goes after the DDs or the healer. Probably there is something programmed that makes it aim for the lower health and higher stamina/magicka players. Some of the mechanics target players with the highest ultimate (ex. Velidreth) or the ones which are further away from the others (ex. Na-Kesh's totem). I think another layer of mechanics on top/in stead of that is quite unnecessary and would make hard fights even harder. And the hard modes of the new dungeons are really hard. Just managed to do them a couple of times, with the same group of friends.

Flameheart

Some people here are hyping mechanics over dps.

While doing enough dps for a special encounter or a part of an encounter can be some sort of mechanic too (Gamyne Bandu in FG 1 -> shadow images, Nerieneth's shield etc.), the utter truth ist, that average-Joe will usually fail both, mechanics and being able to do decent dps.

P3ZZL3

I would love to have a global encounter happen, like Tripple Trouble Wurm

3 Different Bosses, in a single instance, covering an entire zone. Having to take them down together to get the loot.

One of the best MMO Boss Mechanics I've experienced

Asardes

P3ZZL3 wrote: »

I would love to have a global encounter happen, like Tripple Trouble Wurm

3 Different Bosses, in a single instance, covering an entire zone. Having to take them down together to get the loot.

One of the best MMO Boss Mechanics I've experienced

Like the 3 alits that are skippable in DSC2?

P3ZZL3

I'm a moron - DSC2???

Asardes

Dark Shade Caverns 2. The 3 alits that are on the path left as you reach the pit with the netch boss. Usually everyone jumps right in to beat the netch, and skip them. They have to be killed at the same time, because once one dies, he revives after a few seconds if there is another one still up. I've seen players fight them for 5 minutes non stop because they didn't get that mechanic: they bring one to low health, execute, then they don't have time to kill the others, the dead one just pops right up. Lord Warden's Council in Imperial City Prison is somewhat similar - if you kill one of the bosses he raises as a ghost and does what he did before, but can't be harmed. In both cases the bosses need to be dropped at the same time.

P3ZZL3

This I did not know and have not done

Knowing how quick I can burn through the netches just myself on DSC1 - I assume it can't be hard - just timing.

What I don't get, when it comes to Boss Mechanics, is why the bosses and mechanics can't be Random and Modular.

Always the same place, same boss, same mechanic. The Dungeon is instanced, so it's preloaded. It really shouldn't be that hard to have a modlar built dungeon system that loads different states, bosses, mechanics to keep mixing things up?

Sure, the actual instance load time might be increased a little, but I think for a 20-30 minute dungeon run, people would be fine with it.

Doctordarkspawn

My opinion is this.

DPS checks have a place.

Mechanics have a place.

Focus on one or the other depends on the content you are attempting to put out. For Dungeons, I would say, mechanical focus is more usefull in that climate because the DPS limit can only be so much given the adverage span of people who are effective.

For raids, while mechanics should not be left out to dry entirely, the ceiling for DPS is alot higher and thus things like the Foundation Stone Atronoch exist.

At the end of the day the question is not mechanics versus DPS. The question is where the difficulty needs to be, that that remains Raids. Out of Maelstrom, Shadows of the Hist, and Vet Maw of Lorkhaj, Maw is the only one consistantly beloved and not polarizing. Why? Raiders like hard content. Shadows of the hist is barely run for gear and not enjoyment and Maelstrom is outright hated by many.

TLDR: The method of difficulty isn't as important as the difficulty itself. Keep hard stuff to raids and let dungeons be the content most people do, as that is how those two audiences have allways evolved. The hardcore crowd coalesces and the masses split into small groups. The deviations from this are the notible exeption, rather than the rule.

P3ZZL3

Valid points Doc.

Asardes

P3ZZL3 wrote: »

Always the same place, same boss, same mechanic. The Dungeon is instanced, so it's preloaded. It really shouldn't be that hard to have a modlar built dungeon system that loads different states, bosses, mechanics to keep mixing things up?

It should be cool to have a randomly generated dungeon, with various boss mechanics. For example begin with a HM Warrior that calls a Possesed Manticora mid fight, continue with a Skinrai & Vashai type arena, but with 4 quarters instead of 2 halves, an ecounter with 3 Velidreths surrounded by 6 statues and finally a Rakkat with 3 Warden Dusk adds that oneshot players

Alcast

Try Trials on veteran.