Lets talk bosses

[Hestia 0]

Evening everyone my name is Hestia as you may or may not know me. If not then i hope to be able to talk to you more and get to know about you some more to hopefully become friends in the future. However, this is a more serious talk about the latest bosses we've had for the floor bosses. What are your thoughts on them so far? From things like just the physical design we've described them as, their abilities, the mechanics of the bosses, and in reference to our unicorn we had for F22 what did you think about the multiple drops thing we added in that. Give your thoughts and feelings about every aspect of the boss designs we've had as i mentioned from just the various mobs that have been chosen to vary them up, to the way we've handled them, down to the mechanics of things. I hope to hear everyone's words and thoughts on this if they have any. This is for the entire community to answer not just frontliners.

[Baldur 0]

I think the last slew of bosses have been fantastic. That said, I have a lot of opinions, which I'm sure surprises no one.

• Basic mechanics: This boss fight actually highlights this perfectly, but Frontliners should never be at a loss about how basic mechanics work going into a boss fight. These are the fundamentals of how the game works. I really hate that bosses break from this. I'm not talking about things like the card mechanics, or now abilities, but things like how turn order works with multiple bosses. This stuff should be consistent, or if not consistent, known to the frontliners before-hand. Players should be surprised by the boss's powers, not by how the game itself works.
• Hate should not be fire and forget. As someone who primarily plays tanks in MMOs, hate is a tank's Damage, and his opponent is his own DPS players. Tanking should be an active activity that is fun and rewarding as much as DPS is. Think about what you expect the tank to be doing in a boss fight, and we should make those actions in the system. Right now it's just howl, and then ignore the boss until your DPS catches up a few turns later.
• Turn order: We ended up with the system we have now because I have to compromise with Oikawa, but there should be turn parity. That means everyone acts 1:1. However, what we currently do with party set-up and posting windows I think works really well. It gets parties to act as a unit, and I think people are more organized to post that way, and it gives everyone an idea of when their turn will be. We seem to be moving quickly through turns. Turn parity will do a few things, and I'll make sub-points below
  • Staff will have to post as the boss less: The boss would (mostly) only post once, then all of the parties would go, then the boss would go, then all the parties would go.
  • Narrative consistency: One of the key narrative components of turn based combat is that all of these actions are going on at the same time. Party 1 and Party 2 are attacking at the same time, they're not sitting around waiting for their turn, and I think that gets lost in the way we're running things currently
  • Boss's can take bigger actions: Bosses can still take multiple actions in their post, it just all happens at once. This mirrors how it happens in all other games. We have created a special oddity here a myriad of dizzying reasons.
  • It makes threat easier: Bosses would attack the people with the highest thread across the entire raid, not just the "active party" stuff I had to invent to try and make this system make sense
  • It makes multiple enemies easier: Players wouldn't have to worry about juggling different types of combat, all combat would just be the same. Player phase, enemy phase, and everyone gets the same number of turns.
  • Boss fights and non boss fights would operate the same: you wouldn't ever have a question about a basic mechanic of a boss fight versus a normal fight, they would operate the same.
  • It should be easier for new players to pick up: this is how every other game, table top and turn based computer game operate.
  • You can still have interrupts and triggers: You can still do things like "when the boss hits 75% health" that happens mid round, but it wouldn't be the boss' "main action" it would be a trigger/reaction
• I love the detail and personality and creativity going into bosses lately. I think they've done a great job with the writing, making them interesting bosses, and also interesting to read. Bialas was the first boss thread I wasn't involved in where I just read it and enjoyed it.
• I love that bosses have become more accessible. I mean, we'll see how it works out for the tier 2 players, but I love that players are getting more involved at an earlier level. I think this is good for the site on a whole
  • I still think dropping tier level requirement makes sense, and wouldn't require any adjustment on anyone's part other than changing the level. Currently, we have tier 3, which starts at level 50, and you get on floors 21+, then then 30+ will be tier 4 at level 75 and up, then tier 5 at level 100 and up? On floor 50? This is silly.
  • Drop the tiers to ideal levels. Floors 1 through 10, and levels 1 through 15. Floors 11 to 20, Tier 2 and levels 16 to 30, Floors 21 to 30 Tier 3 and levels 31 to 45. Floors 31 to 40, Tier 4 and levels 46 to 60. It makes sense, and it gets new players into tier 3 gear at a reasonable level for the content they're fighting, and it means they won't be at a significant disadvantage vs players that have been here for longer
  • We've been wanting to get new players up to speed and involved faster, and until we do something like a level cap, this is an easy win for doing that.
• I think everyone should get -a rewards- for the boss fight, even if it's just Col and Materials. Give everyone a couple thousand Col, and a couple mats each. Or drop a pot and let the players distribute it.
  • I know the last hit bonus is canon and everyone loves it, and that might be okay for DPS players who make up 75% of the raid, but we need to differentiate it.
  • Drop (1) 4 slot item per boss that is designed and awesome like we have been.
  • Drop a couple unidentified items. Due to the random nature of the identification process, you could even drop unidentified 4 slot items. They wouldn't necessarily have a "unique" enhancement, but would still be better than the average gear. This would let you reward more players without putting too many OP items out there.
  • Or you could drop a couple of 4 slot "standard" items. I mean, I know it's not "meta" bet a sword with 3 slots of damage and 1 of accuracy, even though it doesn't have a unique enhancement, is still a great weapon, and lots of players would love to have it.
• Road to getting to the boss: I still think we're missing huge story opportunity with our current method of getting to the boss. 99% of players go to the boss fight as their first experience on the new floor. That is -not- how this is supposed to go. We should make story events out of exploring the new floors. We have lots of people who want to be storytellers, let's use them. Let's making exploring the new floor for the first time fun and exciting. Let's make discovering the labyrinth fun and exciting and a community event. Let's make exploring the labyrinth and event! I know it will slow floor to floor progress down, but everyone almost unanimously said the journey is the part they're interested in, not the destination. 

[Macradon 0]

The only real issue I've had with bosses recently that hasn't already been pretty well described by Baldur, is the scaling of these bosses.
Yes, I know they're scaled to not be pushover because 30% of the frontliners are nearing end game levels, but I still think it would make sense for bosses to be scaled to the floor they're on, and not the players going after it. You could seperate the damage values by the targeted tiered player, but that wouldn't make sense.

 

[Baldur 0]

To an extent the bosses are scaled to tier of equipment, but that's why i think the level required for the equipment should be dropped to make sense