Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’ll be doing a series in which I try to figure out fight mechanics and changes to common meta/world boss events that not only present a challenge, but also keep it at a level that makes it possible to do without having to organize an entire zerg to do specific things (which isn’t easy with random people). I will also try to figure out ways in which the reward succeeding and they punish failure. These are champions of ELDER DRAGONS. These events need to feel epic, feel like a fight to the death, and the success and failure of these events should have a HUGE impact on the open world. These post will be long.

The first part in the series will be the world boss Shatterer

1. The fight!

The pre events are reasonable and fine where they are at. However the initial fight dissolves into an auto attack. It is important to make a fight in a way that players have to pay attention to what the boss is doing. So something I’d love to see done with these world bosses is spreading out the people. How can you do this? Simple, take advantage of the Pact. The Pact it supposed to be for fighting elder dragons, so from a lore standpoint it would make sense.
So the fight would start out as normal. The Shatterer would be able to shoot the purple flames all around him and spawn exploding crystals that do lots of damage all around him.

-There is actually another event running parallel to this where you have to defend “Pact Zeppelins” from waves of enemies while the other people are fighting the shatterer up north. Failure to defend them will result in the loss of the zepplins, there will be 3 of them. The zeppelins will be landed on a zeppling tower located here (there is a lot of open room to work with, and its not really close to where the other players are to prevent culling.
http://i.imgur.com/W8UyK70.jpg

-Once the dragon reaches 75% he will take off and do a massive crystal breath sweep over the area where he was just fighting. If anyone gets caught in it they die instantly. The only way to escape it is to hide behind the rocks that are shooting up from the ground. Like so
http://imgur.com/SKE5E3a

-While in the air the players who are at the zeppelins will prepare to take off. They can only board 2 zeppelins while the third has named npcs on them. All three take off to go after The Shatterer in the sky, with the NPC zeppelin in the front and the player ones to each side. The Shatterer gets behind the NPC one and the player zeppelins are maneuvered next to the shatterer. The shatterers altitude is going up and down (so cannons have to aim) and the players must either shoot him with ranged or fire on him with cannons (the work similar to the skill point in bloodtide coast by the whisper base, where you shoot the practice targets). Everyonce in a while the shatter will turn his head and do a crystal breath, anyone caught in it will take a lot of damage. Players muse use props/get inside of the zeppelin to negate the damage. He will also shoot out crystal pods that land on the ships and explode causing AoE damage around them and spawning branded.

- Those who were initially on the ground not defending the zeppelins but fighting the Shatterer can man flak cannons that would be spawned here. http://i.imgur.com/C1fO6nU.jpg. The Flak cannons would have a fixed location/target and the players must time their shots/projectiles right to hit the dragon while he is in the air.

-Once the dragon reaches 50% his wings will be destroyed, he will then latch onto the zeppelin with the npcs and bring them down with him. The player zeppelins will then hover over where the cannons are and players can take “parachutes” down to the surface. Those who stay up there can still man the surviving cannons to fire on the ground at the shatterer/branded. You can then see the zeppelin that the shatterer took down with him in a burning ruin. All of the crew was turned into branded and the shatterer has encased himself in a crystal shield, he beings to heal very slowly. The players now must killed the branded crew of the downed zeppelin and then destroy the shield to begin the final fight

-The final fight will be similar to the first one, just he now has a attack where he breathes crystal breath from side to side, similar to the final attack of the tentacle boss in fractals. Killing him will result in 100% chance to get at least 2 rares. Branded forces in the area will be thinned.

Failing the event

-The event can fail at a few stages. The zeppelins can be destroyed. Only the two player ones can, and the players wont be able to go up. The event will still go on, but the flak cannons will be the only way players can damage the shatterer while he is in the air.
-If the forward base falls. If the 2 engineers that are there, the 4 cannons, and all of the flak cannons are destroyed, the event will fail.

Effects of failing- The dragon brand will expand, bases/camps will fall, npcs will become branded versions of themselves.
In the following pictures, the purple line represents the new boundary of the brand if you fail the shatterer. The red X’s represent towns that have fallen and their inhabitants have been turned into brand. New dynamic events will appear at each event. The event will involve taking out the branded NPCs inside the village. Once you’ve killed them all, you must defend the point from invading branded till reinforcements arrive. Once they arrive, the towns/camps turn back to normal.

http://imgur.com/a/zk3nE#0

That is it for part 1 of my suggestion series saying my thoughts on how to improve world events! Have ideas on how to improve shatterer? Post them below!

Shatterer====
Weaknesses: Stationary, WP is right next to fight,minions’ logic, fail proof.
Solution(Stationary+ Fail proof): With the large field of destruction beind the shatterer fight, why not make this a slightly mobile fight? It seems a little strange that the dragon’s don’t progress forward but adding something like movement to these massively sized bosses would be near impossible without a million glitches. So something small like it moving forward 1 step at a time could be doable. The shatterer will start towards the back, and if you (the players) don’t various mini events to keep the dragon away it will move forward, damaging each player near its footsteps. Throughout the fight you can’t push the shatterer back, you can only prevent it from moving forward by doing mini events such as:
-Fire multiple (3 or more) net shots from the cannons to pull the Shatterer back onto the ground (when it flies up). To compensate and make it worthwhile, The Shatterer stays up in the air much longer releasing more exploding crystals as time goes on. Failing to bring The Shatterer back down before it goes down by itself will make it move forward.
-Deal enough damage while staying in front of The Shatterer(doing damage to the head which is only targetable while in the front area of the Shatterer). The Lieutenant that spawns has a knockback move and will try clearing the area in front of the Shatterer. Kill the lietenant to stop it from making room or the Shatterer will progress (it doesnt litterly make room but it guards the front area where you are supposed to be and knocks back delaying your dmg output). This discourages everyone from staying at the paws and pushes more people to get up front.
-Grab explosive charges from the vigil base and plant them on recharging crystals. These will explode and deal high damage to The Shatterer shortly after being planted and destroy that crystal. Planting the charge takes a few seconds and requires you to not be hit during the process. Additionally, crystals are made harder to kill so for groups who want to plant charges, they arn’t so easily turned down from fools smashing the 1 button.
If The Shatterer gets close enough to the seige weapons he will start breaking them with his screech. If all seige weapons are destroyed you fail the event and he flies back into the sky. Additionally, branded creatures in the dragon brand get a buff until the shatterer event starts again that grants them increased damage and health. This applies to all of the dragon brand in any zone.
Solution(WP): The waypoint currently is super close to the fight and you can just die, respawn and continue fighting. The solution to stationary could definitly help but one more mechanic that could excite those participating that I think would be really difficult. When killed by the Shatterer or any of its minions during the event(including the normal spawns around the event zone) you turn into an uncontrollable branded. This is similar to the beta event where you could turn into the branded but instead you can’t control yourself. You are stuck in branded form until someone kills you or after 45 seconds. The only thing the branded do is seek a target and basic attack them with your stats (precision, vitality, toughness, power). After being killed again or after 45 seconds you can spawn once more. Players trapped in crystals also will be turned into a branded if they do not escape in 10 seconds. With more add-ons to deal with and more time spent away from the shatterer it could actually turn into a difficult fight.
*Solution(Minions): *There are many minions in the fight, but only at certain parts and mostly at the seige weapons not where all the people stay. Minions should really be more of an issue for both those on the seige weapons and those up front. Nothing super annoying to just lag up peoples screen but the little spawns that roam around seem to have little to no affect on those up front, but the players at the seige weapons see numerous waves just eliminate the seige weapons in a matter of seconds. Maybe along with stationary, they would make the mortars a necessity to help keep back the shatterer and if not enough people stayed to defend the mortars they would reach closer to losing the event each time it went up into the sky. Additionally, the rate at which branded get lightning bolted out of the sky to the field should increase around the area and deal damage to players (1 second delay from red circle so it is avoidable).

In the end, these events need to be fail-able (is that a word?). There should be some objective to these fights other than swing 1 till it’s dead, because it doesn’t defend it’s paws nearly as much as it protects the front. If they fail, pretty much what op said it should influence the zone. Maybe not extend the dragon brand but maybe more branded veterans or the branded get a zone wide boon that increases their difficulty.

NinjaEd.3946:

Shatterer====
Weaknesses: Stationary, WP is right next to fight,minions’ logic, fail proof.
Solution(Stationary+ Fail proof): With the large field of destruction beind the shatterer fight, why not make this a slightly mobile fight? It seems a little strange that the dragon’s don’t progress forward but adding something like movement to these massively sized bosses would be near impossible without a million glitches. So something small like it moving forward 1 step at a time could be doable. The shatterer will start towards the back, and if you (the players) don’t various mini events to keep the dragon away it will move forward, damaging each player near its footsteps. Throughout the fight you can’t push the shatterer back, you can only prevent it from moving forward by doing mini events such as:
-Fire multiple (3 or more) net shots from the cannons to pull the Shatterer back onto the ground (when it flies up). To compensate and make it worthwhile, The Shatterer stays up in the air much longer releasing more exploding crystals as time goes on. Failing to bring The Shatterer back down before it goes down by itself will make it move forward.

I really like this idea. It is simple, yet adds some more depth to the. The use of dynamic events to help damage the shatterer could be an awesome idea. This is a giant dragon, im shoot chipping at its feet wouldn’t do much from a logic perspective. However loading cannons and fire mortars and explosives at it would do something.

Great post!

I really like this idea, but how would we deal with the fps? I have a great pc, usually run the game in high quality, but the amount of people + effects make the fps go down to 10

Any thoughts?

HELLruler.4820:

I really like this idea, but how would we deal with the fps? I have a great pc, usually run the game in high quality, but the amount of people + effects make the fps go down to 10

Any thoughts?

ArenaNet should improve GW2’s optimization..

HELLruler.4820:

I really like this idea, but how would we deal with the fps? I have a great pc, usually run the game in high quality, but the amount of people + effects make the fps go down to 10

Any thoughts?

Honestly the lag is pretty poor right now, that is why I was suggesting trying to spread players out, but they still contribute and fight the enemy. Other than that I have no idea. With the amount of people that attend these events, anything we do will cause lag.

The devs have stated that they want to change a few meta events and dragons is on the top of that list. However, these changes would require new artwork, modeling and coding so it’s going to be a while.