Greetings everyone! I want to point out a few things here which I found interesting in the two attempts that I did with Taco. (Now while two isn’t a great deal of attempts, I’ll explain why that was enough below)
First of all I want to talk about a typical raid or dungeon environment and I want to tell you why it works.
First of all, time. Time is a big part on this one because people don’t have a lot of it. Not to mention focus, timing, and effort take a lot out of a person, and they can’t be expected to give the same amount of time and effort all day long.
This is why a raid encounter is lost by all party members losing hp and eventually dying. (typically)
The reason for this is because it’s a quick way to tell players that they lost, to reset the fight, preparing it for them to attempt it again, and for the players to try new tactics. Time is greatly reduced for players because if they had to go the full time of an encounter each time they fought the boss, they would feel like their time was wasted, and they would feel very discouraged over time, ultimately making them feel like it wasn’t worth their valuable time, or effort. (I see this already happening with Taco).
Another thing to look into is resets. Normally you would have as long as you would like on a boss (to a certain extent) and it would reset on a standard day allowing you to fight the boss until you were content. Having a boss on a timer makes you waste an entire day focusing on killing a boss that seems hopeless. For those of you who don’t have a lot of time, this can be extremely frustrating and it may even put you off from the game. Knowing that you’re a skilled player, that wants to dedicate the time, but feels helpless due to the lack of coordinated assistance by players that you have no emotional attachment to and overall could care less about is a huge factor in this as well.
Which brings me to my next statement. Most things that require coordination in MMOS are almost always beat via VOIPS, or online voice chat. The reason for this is because typing during a fight will often leave you dead due to standing in one place. This is seen during the taco fight, as there is no easy way for all players to communicate with all of the other players easily without dying. Which leads to a lack of coordination, which defeats the purpose of having a fight like Taco that requires coordination. This ultimately leads to frustrated players, players that feel like they could easily do it if they had as many of them as there were people who didn’t care to listen, or to grow with the fight.
My next observation would have to be stragglers. In dungeons or raids you wouldn’t have stragglers. If the group felt someone was mooching, they removed them and got a replacement. Someone that could fill the shoes. What happens here? That person stays regardless of how well they actually play or contribute to the event. Most likely a better suited and skilled player is thrown into an overflow server and cannot join the main group on the home server due to that slot now being filled by someone that doesn’t care about actually finishing the fight.
Leading on from the last observation; Why care about learning the mechanics? Why not just wait for everyone else to learn them and just mooch off of them after they learn it? One of the first things I thought of as a player was why learn the fight? I don’t have time to stay logged in every hour or two just to wait for the fight to happen so I can waste 30 minutes of typing out to each player how to do the fight, so I can constantly die in poison clouds from not being able to move while having to pay a durability fine and while having to sort through overflow servers to even get to play with my friends in my party all the while thinking about how it would just be easier to get loot champ farming. (<3 run on sentences)
To sum it all up; despite watching the sneak peek video of Taco, being pumped for a few weeks for this content, and while going in and giving it my all with the understanding that I would have to learn the fight, and get good at it, I felt that this type of encounter should never be done for an entire zone wide event. The reason world bosses work in other MMOs is because they don’t have a swarm of people on them. They have a limited number which means it can be controlled, contained, and it can be coordinated. These three C’s seem to be the three C’s this game is currently lacking when it comes to developing content. And while “A FERARRI IN EVERY GARAGE!” and “A HAT ON EVERY HEAD!” sounds great, it doesn’t pan out that well when you try to throw challenge into the mix. (If anyone didn’t get that reference, I’m referring to loot for everyone as long as they participate)
ALL IN ALL——— Put challenging content in dungeons/raids where groups of 5+ can tackle content in a controlled, contained, and coordinated environment.