How long should a world boss fight last?

Llevndryn

With the Writhing Wall event and the dolmen bosses lasting for something like 20 seconds, I'm wondering what you think the ideal boss fight length should be.
Surely, everybody would agree that the 20 seconds at best that a Writhing Wall siege boss lasts feel nothing close to epic. You're mostly worried you'll be able to hit once before it dies. But Ghishzor, in contrast, feels already more like what you would expect from a boss.

So, how long should it take to feel like you're fighting a real threat? And is duration all that matters?

duagloth

Depends on the amount of players and whether its bugged or not.

tomofhyrule

This 1000% depends on the number of players around.

The Solstice bosses are dying in 3.5 seconds because every camp has 57+ characters spamming their max-powered Fatecarver and Watcher beams before it even has a chance to spawn. If you want a boss that takes a while, go check out the Harrowstorms and see how long those take, considering literally nobody else is around.

This always happens with an event, and especiallY one that has been overhyped as much as this one: so many people will farm the event things that it makes them feel irrelevant.
Come back to them in February and see if you still think they’re too easy.

whitecrow

1 to 2 minutes

I think 1-2 minutes is enough to make it challenging but not tedious.

LunaFlora

depends on the situation.

during an event it can take less than a minute.
outside an event a few minutes is pretty average.

SeaGtGruff

It totally depends on how many players are fighting the bosses and how powerful those players are.

On PCEU I did the quests to protect the siege camps late at night, Eastern USA time-- starting maybe 45 minutes before daily server reset and continuing until just after server reset (11 PM EDT)-- and there were not that many other players on at that time, so the boss fights were definitely not lasting 20 seconds "at most." In fact, even the fights to take out the soul reapers were taking us longer than 20 seconds.

Then I switched over to PCNA and it was a totally different experience as compared to on PCEU. There were still a lot of other players on, and everything was being melted down much quicker than when I was on PCEU.

Llevndryn

More than 5 minutes

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This always happens with an event, and especiallY one that has been overhyped as much as this one: so many people will farm the event things that it makes them feel irrelevant.
Come back to them in February and see if you still think they’re too easy.

I agree, but this is supposed to feel good during the event, not months later or in the middle of the night. Maybe the bosses health points should be adapted after the event, but it is suppose to be fun and fine tuned when the event is actually happening.

So my question would be: how long should this last during the peak event hours?

I wonder if a scaling mecanic that adapts the boss HP depending on the number of players around would be a solution.

tomofhyrule

Llevndryn wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This always happens with an event, and especiallY one that has been overhyped as much as this one: so many people will farm the event things that it makes them feel irrelevant.
Come back to them in February and see if you still think they’re too easy.

I agree, but this is supposed to feel good during the event, not months later or in the middle of the night. Maybe the bosses health points should be adapted after the event, but it is suppose to be fun and fine tuned when the event is actually happening.

So my question would be: how long should this last during the peak event hours?

I wonder if a scaling mecanic that adapts the boss HP depending on the number of players around would be a solution.

They actually do scale. I’ve seen sometimes when there are two or three named bosses at the bonfire instead of just one. But still, if you have 57 Arcanist beams, even that doesn’t matter.

The thing with changing HP or mechanics is that that requires a patch to change. That’s not something they could do as a backend thing. So there’s another “bring the servers down during an event” set of complaints. And then how do you control for halfway through the event when interest falls off?

They did change a WB exactly once: during the Murkmire event, they made Walks-in-Thunder spawn his totems faster to keep up with players. And now that there’s not an event, he’s basically impossible to kill without 57 Arcanists because he spawns the totems and heals faster than any one player can control them.

It’s the same complaints every event, and that’s not going to change… or if it did, it would make three people happy for two days, and then actively make things worse. The best solution is to ignore those dailies for now until sometime next week once people get bored grinding them and getting blue overland gear and realizing that the bar is moving regardless of how much grinding players do, and then we’ll see people in zone begging for help to clear them.

Llevndryn

More than 5 minutes

I was thinking more about developing a mechanic that dynamically adapts health points, rather than a manual change that requires a patch.
I imagine there is a limit to this, and it's okay if the situation only occurs during the first two days of the event, but it seems reasonable to expect content adapted to the real situation on the server outside of the early rush.

Soarora

3 to 5 minutes

I was doing QUESTS in West Solstice and found that every single boss I had to have my companion solo or it’d die very quickly… they still died very quickly. I think zos vastly underestimates how much damage people do and it has a ripple effect (event bosses dying instantly, people getting by with no skills and only light attacks and then trying to do a dungeon, etc.).

Ingenon

tomofhyrule wrote: »

They did change a WB exactly once: during the Murkmire event, they made Walks-in-Thunder spawn his totems faster to keep up with players. And now that there’s not an event, he’s basically impossible to kill without 57 Arcanists because he spawns the totems and heals faster than any one player can control them.

ROFL. About the 57 Arcanists. I mean, yes it is too much for most solo players. But I have taken down Walks-in-Thunder with one other player with both of us on HA Oakensoul builds, each with a companion out. And focus on the totems when they are out.

redlink1979

It's fine as it is.
You can't forget that the time a world boss is alive is inversely proportional to the amount of players and the dps done by them.

Razmirra

3 to 5 minutes

Player count is the biggest factor here. If you have 25 people hammering it with DoTs, procs, channeled skills, etc. they're going to be killed in a matter of minutes. Dynamically adjust the HP depending on how many people are there.

Shawn_PT

The problem is not how long should it last. The problem is that you either have the whole server condensed in one area, or you have literally no one.

Try going back to some "old" content. Yes the bosses/events might last 20 seconds when they're fresh new, or they are the subject of an event. But after that, nobody goes back there. Nobody. It'll go from having 50 people ultidumping to having maybe 2 or 3 people trying to kill an enemy with 20 million health, and it's not fun.

PeacefulAnarchy

Between 30 seconds and 1 minute

For the game as designed where bosses are part of dailies and thus repeatable with rather mediocre rewards they should not last too long.

I wouldn't mind multi minute bosses but the game's gameplay and reward loop would have to be conmensurate.

SkaiFaith

Depends on so many factors, but most of all how fun and rewarding the experience is: the simplest base game World Boss fight can't last 3 minutes, it would feel like 3 hours. On the other hand I enjoy soloing the hardest World Bosses in DLCs because the fights are more fun and you feel like you have accomplished something.

Also, as others said, players number is another factor. More players = more time I'm willing to invest. BUT this doesn't mean I want a 30 minutes fight if I face the same one alone afterwards!

AzuraFan

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This 1000% depends on the number of players around.

Exactly this. Everything's dying quickly right now because there are tons of players at the camps. I don't think we want a boss with 30m health spawning in a few months when there's only one poor player there.

Llevndryn

More than 5 minutes

AzuraFan wrote: »

Exactly this. Everything's dying quickly right now because there are tons of players at the camps. I don't think we want a boss with 30m health spawning in a few months when there's only one poor player there.

Again, this was expected and therefore could be tailored to the situation. The idea of ​​this event being unique is also that the gaming experience must be unique. It shouldn't be designed for what it will be like afterward, but for the experience that it is now.

And for this very special event to feel epic, shouldn't the battles last longer? Wouldn't it be fun to be overwhelmed by the threat, to feel the historical and grandiose dimension of the battle?
Of course, Phase 2 will be more difficult, so we'll see then. But I feel like the balance hasn't been found for this first phase.

Lord_Hev

More than 5 minutes

Very simple concept imo. Trial bosses are intended to be 5 minute+ fights(historical hindsight irrelevant of power creep making older content bosses burnable in under 5 minutes.) Each update always seems to strive for 6 - 12 minute kills as the intended target when you factor in boss health and unique phases.

Overland exceeds 12 person trial limit. 5 minutes as a baseline should be the norm to factor in variation of population sizes and gear-equipped/skill/etc. Or in other words, just look at the actual -health- of the World bosses and compare it to non-hm veteran trial bosses. At the moment they seem to share the health of normal trial bosses which isn't a surprise considering overland is on normal difficulty as a baseline.

If only we had veteran overland instancing...

spartaxoxo

3 to 5 minutes

3-5 minutes for a vet player on the lower end of the vet scale by themselves. This would mean that it would take a couple of minutes for a high power level player or a couple of lower powered players.

Morgaledh

More than 5 minutes

tomofhyrule wrote: »

57+ characters spamming their max-powered Fatecarver

Off topic here, but I couldn't resist. We joke about this in one of our guilds all the time. Watch those arcs. The ones who keep beaming after there's nothing left to kill (that's about 90% of them)? You know, beaming into empty air, etc. after whatever they're killing has died?

They are the ones who don't know they can turn it off. The beam.

That's how you tell a vet player with experience in playing the game from a player who rolled an arc, grinded zombies or gods know what to hit 50, watched some videos and copypasted some builds and is just pressing some buttons because ARCS ARE FIRE OMGLOL whatever. No actual clue what they're doing, but that ez button is pretty damn, well, ez to press.

You watch. Every time.

Radiate77

More than 5 minutes

Not sure how many of you had the opportunity to play the Diablo IV beta, but the experience fighting Ashava back when we were all underleveled trying to push to make the 15 minute timer was incredible.

Of course when the full game dropped, the bosses became a joke, but if ZOS took from that beta experience and adapted it to ESO, and gave World Bosses an enrage timer of 10-15 minutes, smarter mechanics and health that scaled with the number of people attacking them, they could be a lot more fun and exciting.

Last'One

More than 5 minutes

Bosses should be truly challenging. After all, this is a game, we log in to play, not to one-shot a boss in under a minute and then spend the rest of the time wandering around or farming nodes. Where’s the fun in that?

A boss should demand teamwork. We should need tanks, healers, and damage dealers working together, because ESO has always been about teamplay. But do we still have that? Sadly, no. Right now, there’s almost nothing left that actually feels like “playing” the game. We skip mechanics, we finish entire veteran trials, like vCR+3, in just 2 minutes. Nothing makes sense anymore.

If we’re going to have event bosses, at least make them truly difficult. ZOS should make them feel epic again, tough, demanding, and rewarding. We’ve already lost much of the challenge, the lore, and the magic that ESO used to have in everyday gameplay. The least ZOS could do is bring that feeling back through special events.


If things keep going like this, a game where tanks aren’t needed, healers barely heal, and DPS players can melt bosses in ten seconds, then even feeding horses in The Sims 4 will feel more challenging than ESO.

Getsugatenso

More than 5 minutes

I think it should be like in anime, a considerable battle with a really angry boss throwing players into the air, if it lasted at least 5 minutes it would be good.

Getsugatenso

More than 5 minutes

Has anyone on the ESO team ever heard of scaling? With each player, the boss's HP, power, and defense increase, of course, to a certain extent. And it's time to improve this monster's animations, making them more consistent. You could have the boss chew through some players and even crush them a bit.

tomfant

A boss fight should be interesting and engaging, with fresh mechanics. Then it's totally irrelevant how long it takes to end the fight.

Gabriel_H

Without player numbers it's an unanswerable question.

Gabriel_H

Getsugatenso wrote: »

Has anyone on the ESO team ever heard of scaling? With each player, the boss's HP, power, and defense increase, of course, to a certain extent.

Some do, but by no means all from my experience. Same with some world events. Ever solo'd a Volvanic Event and seen the bosses health suddenly jump back up? Means another player is nearby. Can be super annoying. lol

CoronHR

ALL AFTERNOON

wolfie1.0.

2 to 3 minutes

A very easy solution here. Set a preset timer on world bosses that are event related. If boss is killed longer than set time since last spawn boss fight is normal. If boss dies faster from spawn than normal, then boss doesnt "die" with loot it triggers a phase 2 mode that is harder to kill and designed to be taken down by 12+ players.

Something along those lines.

twisttop138

1 to 2 minutes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Getsugatenso wrote: »

Has anyone on the ESO team ever heard of scaling? With each player, the boss's HP, power, and defense increase, of course, to a certain extent.

Some do, but by no means all from my experience. Same with some world events. Ever solo'd a Volvanic Event and seen the bosses health suddenly jump back up? Means another player is nearby. Can be super annoying. lol

I thought I was crazy the other day when I saw this. Wow. While annoying, dynamic scaling would be pretty sweet to have on world bosses. Maybe just some, ya know. Epic bosses. Maybe have the WB symbol with a plus next to it so you know you can't solo it. Eh, wish list.

As for the guy who said he did vCR +3 in 2 minutes. We can't balance the game around that. I think the power creep is crazy but I'm not sure how 2 minutes is the mark. Most players, 99% of players probably aren't able to do that. I'm pretty newer to hm raiding. I have +3 but it was no 2 minute run, even after subclassing.