Unleashed Mobile Bosses

Iccotak

Disclaimer
Here was the previous discussion and previous poll where the was a major miscommunication issue. People thought the OP meant putting Dragons everywhere.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5981859

Idea
Taking inspiration from the Dragons in the upcoming Elsweyr chapter; what if ZOS implemented Major special event Bosses that moved around the map?
Unlike events akin Dark Anchors and World Bosses, these would be more rare and only one can be active in the zone. Think of it as a boss that has been "Unleashed" upon the world. They're Tough, Big, Angry, got alot of Loot, and wander the world map.
When one spawns the player will see a notification that the Boss is now wandering the map. A red marker will be on the compass indicating the direction and the map will show the general vicinity, but not exactly, where the Beast is.

These Bosses apply only to the following:
-Base Game Zones including; Factions zones, Coldharbour, Cyrodil and Craglorn
-Chapter Zones

DLC zones (Orsinium, TG, DB, CWC, MM, etc.) are smaller stories and won't have these massive bosses wandering the area.

The following are ideas as to what bosses would appear in their respective zones

NOTES:
-These are Much Larger Variants
-Gryphons and Daedric Titans would actually fly around the map

Factions, Coldharbour, Cyrodil: Daedric Titans, Giant Flesh Colossus

Craglorn: Large Air Atronach, War Mantikora

Morrowind: Enraged Iron Atronach, Furious Fetcherfly Hive Golem, Ravenous Hunger

Summerset: Gryphon Shade, Abyssal Yaghra Monstrosity

Elsweyr: Legendary Dragons; bigger than normal dragon encounters and on par with Trial Dragons

Iccotak

Will be interesting to see if Zenimax does something like this in future chapters.
It does look like they are trying to be more creative with 'dolmen-like' events.

Swainyboy

This would be a very interesting mechanic, in the same was WoW had the Sha of Anger that took like 100 people to bring down. I think if they added this kind of feature, it will need to have neutral agro, so it only attacked you if you attacked it as it would crush players all day long for just walking by.

This would need some kind of new loot system though, perhaps sets that can only be dropped via roaming bosses, rather than these bosses dropping sets for the zone they exist within. I believe there should be a mechanical presence to these bosses too, e.g Stacks building up on a tank, meaning another tank has to take aggro to allow the first tank to time out the stacks etc.

But I'd love to see something like that exist, a real reason for end-game players to get involved with overworld rather than set farming

Iluvrien

Would these roaming bosses be precluded from going anywhere near quest locations and hubs?

Danikat

I've seen this done in other games and it seems to go over well, people are often willing to stop what they were doing to join in with fighting the boss. And in ESO it would have the advantage that level scalling means everyone can join in with all of them instead of newer characters having to avoid it because they'll die instantly or higher level characters being unable to do low level bosses.

They would need to stay away from quest hubs as @Iluvrien says, both so they don't mess up the quests and because otherwise people following a boss will suddenly be pulled into different instances and unable to carry on together, but I think there's enough open areas that this could still work.

Dragonnord

So ping reaches +999 and the server crashes when 500 players gather at the boss place spamming all type of abilities?
 

Iccotak

Imagine something like this happening in Cyrodil or a PvE zone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwSd1HTrG34&feature=youtu.be

Marcus684

Sounds like the Roving Threats in LOTRO that were added to get players to team up and go to lower level “dead” zones. ZOS could even add a quest and or achievement for defeating them. While it would spice up the overland PvE, it would probably cause huge lag spikes. Adding new things like this to the game should be held off until ZOS deals with the pervasive performance issues.

Vapirko

This game literally cannot handle that idea of 100 players all converging on a boss at once.

pdblake

If it didn't impact performance then it sounds great. I've just got into doing the dragon hunts and enjoy that, even getting one shotted every now and then.

They'd need to make sure that all who participate get some loot though. I've been killed a few times right at the end of a dragon fight, but still got the loot when I've come back in.

I took part in a WB fight in Wrothgar yesterday only to get nothing at all as there were dozens of people all attacking at once. Made me go back to dragon hunting.

redlink1979

Performance must be addressed first... Seems you forget the actual impact of having dozens of players in the same area...

jainiadral

Eh, maybe. But not every map has enough people to handle mega-events, especially at off hours. There would have to be some kind of control, or population threshold that has to be passed for the monsters to spawn. Otherwise there won't be anyone to take them out.

Honestly, I prefer this kind of thing to dolmens and geysers if there's some kind of alert or notification like in GW2 that lets you know an event's happening. I almost never look at zone chat, and rarely at my map (I use a mini-map add-on).

Kel

Others have already said this, but I'll add my voice to the choir...

This sounds like a great idea....for any game that isn't ESO.

The servers cannot handle so many people in one area. Half (at least) of the players participating would be dying from attacks they couldn't see, if the boss isn't glitched in some other way to begin with.

It's a great idea. Just don't see it going over well for this particular game.

Iccotak

redlink1979 wrote: »

Performance must be addressed first... Seems you forget the actual impact of having dozens of players in the same area...

I don't really have performance issues with the internet connection and speed where I am.