Guild Wars 2

One of the biggest issues I see in the MMO’s I’ve played, including GW2, is that unless you go in blind, a boss fight, heck even normal mobs, is predictable.
You learn the patterns, you learn the attacks, the weaknesses, etc.

This also results in players narrowing down the best set-ups for each situation. Thus we have “go zerk or go home”.

All that could be thrown for a loop if the players had to be ready for more than just a few encounter types. It could result in longer (or sometimes shorter) boss fights as well.

What needs to be done is some randomization of the attacks.

Using dungeons as an example, let’s consider Kohler on AC Path 3.

Kohler has a neat attack where he pulls you in and then plays blender. That’s fine. Cost me a few silver, but I learned how to avoid it and what to watch for. You can see what’s going to happen, and even prepare ahead of time for the fight if needed. Choose utilities, weapons, etc.

I’d like to see Anet make bosses a lot more complex. Give someone like Kohler a pool of 30 attacks and defenses, then for each instance/event, have him choose 3. Make them different enough that people actually have to figure out what they are, and form a strategy to get past it with the setups they have.

This would require a reduction in damage on some of the “one-shot” attacks that Anet is so fond of, but Anet is going to have to wake up and realize that gimmicks and cheap-shots are the hallmark of poor design and lack of imagination.

Same would apply for open-world dynamic event bosses like Dwayna’s statue. Give Malchor a pool of 30 attacks to use, and let him choose between 3 and 5 of them when he possesses the statue. Get the players to work together and have to strategize on the spot instead of just reading about the one or two constant mechanics that the boss uses.

World boss events like Jormag could benefit from this as well. The upcoming buff to Teq may be a step in the right direction, but it won’t be long before his attacks are known, right down to the pattern.

The ease of memorization of boss attacks and such has plagued MMO’s for years. It’s time to break that mold and let the players adapt to some unexpected variety.

I love it, but I have no idea how hard that is to program. The only thing I think they’d have to watch out for is not letting certain abilities come together in overly powerful synergies that could mean GG for a group.

My current thinking for world bosses, specifically the dragons, mirrors yours: The Teq fight is going to be great. But for all the additions, Teq is still going to come in, and basically sit on one spot. For a large powerful dragon this is the equivalent of a starship moving at the speed of plot.

I think all three world dragons should be zone-wide events on the scale of Scarlet’s invasions. Multiple simultaneous events to defend each of the town/camps/keeps in the zone from spawned minions all while the dragon occasionally swoops in and stomps around. This gives us an added strain on defending a spot under heavy attack, and allows us to take some potshots at the boss.

Like taking the temples for Arah, each player held site gives us extra troops, artillery, buffs, etc. Eventually allowing us to force the dragon down for a final confrontation.

Combine this with your random ability selection, and we’d have a fight where there was so much to do and so many different ways of if playing out that it would never get old.

All of which sound terribly cool and easy to a non-programmer. :-P

Boss battles could be more interesting if they were less about defeating the ridicilous high healthed boss, and more about defeating a group of strong npc’s with a good group synergy. With Tequatl rising they seem to go this way. However, they should make the normal boss/champion fights more interesting as well.

An example of a more unique boss battle could be as follows:

Imagine a boss battle consisting of a champion flame legion charr wielding melee weapons. He is supported by three vulnerable fire shaman champions with a high ranged damage, but a low survivability. The boss himself has a very high survivability, amazing crowd control, but a very weak damage.

Players will want to take out the fire shaman guards, but the boss has a lot of tricks to ensure players back off his guards.
1. The boss will ru a variety of these in boss/champion battles would help make them more interesting.sh towards the guard with the lowest health, knock over any players around the guard, and apply a large area, long lasting cripple. The guard will then move away from this region, to distance itself from melee atackers.
2. The boss will move on to some of the players who had attacked the guard from range, and use some burst singe target damage, to attempt to down one or more players.

Step 1 and 2 are repeated for the new most threatened guard.

Fergus: I understand where you are coming from there, but what I’m getting at is the removal of mechanics that can be documented as a simple “this is how you fight x boss”.

I’d like to see a list of multiple attacks for each boss, and have the boss randomly choose 3 to 5 of those on spawn. Having additional mobs as part of the mechanic is great, but I see one of the main issues with boredom being that everything can be written down in a short paragraph on how to fight something.

Even veterans should have an attack set. This is something that adds spice to the game without driving up the development cost of the AI. Yes, there is a lot of work involved in creating the attacks, but in the long run it creates more replay value.

Unfortunately, game companies and their investors aren’t interested in innovation, they are interested in profit. As a result, we get the same garbage to choose from when looking for a game. No-one wants to create quality anymore, Anet included. They just want to push out garbage that is “acceptable” as fast as possible.