Guild Wars 2

I get the feeling that Anet is still learning a lot on how to make bosses work in GW2. In GW1 it took them several campaigns to finally deliver a few bosses that were good boss fights.

Mai Trin was a good attempt. The mechanics were solid, even if it was perhaps a bit unforgiving. The final boss of the Molten Facility was a lot better in that respect: Clear tells, a steady difficulty curve, clear mechanics, and some margin for error. All of the mechanics are taught as you play the dungeon, and the boss fight gradually becomes harder as you’re fighting. It also had a good arena, without any camera troubles.

To me it feels the Clockheart is another step backward, and Tequatl is a step forward. They are slowly getting there. But they really do need to step up and fix the core issues with the combat system. Control and conditions first and fore most. Defiant/Unshakable needs to be changed, and the condition cap needs to be resolved.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I get the feeling that Anet is still learning a lot on how to make bosses work in GW2. In GW1 it took them several campaigns to finally deliver a few bosses that were good boss fights.

Mai Trin was a good attempt. The mechanics were solid, even if it was perhaps a bit unforgiving. The final boss of the Molten Facility was a lot better in that respect: Clear tells, a steady difficulty curve, clear mechanics, and some margin for error. All of the mechanics are taught as you play the dungeon, and the boss fight gradually becomes harder as you’re fighting. It also had a good arena, without any camera troubles.

To me it feels the Clockheart is another step backward, and Tequatl is a step forward. They are slowly getting there. But they really do need to step up and fix the core issues with the combat system. Control and conditions first and fore most. Defiant/Unshakable needs to be changed, and the condition cap needs to be resolved.

Actually, the best bosses in gw1 were present at launch.

Tequatl is the step forward? I guess it might be very engaging fight for someone.

spoj.9672:

We ran 2 necros in hotw p1 for funs last night. Me on rampager and the other on rabid. It didnt really improve the kill time of ginva tbh. Still a huge meatshield.

Not at all surprised, as I mentioned I don’t think it really works as a condi fight if that was even the intention. He’s just annoying for everyone.

I like leaping at him on my guardian just as he starts to spin. Always makes me happy, and I do it nearly every time…

haviz.1340:

Actually, the best bosses in gw1 were present at launch.

Glint near the end of Prophecies wasn’t very challenging, and she was an optional boss with very little mechanics.

The Lich at the end of Prophecies was a bit boring, but it had simple enough mechanics.

Shiro in Factions had a nice concept, but he died in mere seconds with some skills.

Varesh in Nightfall was a bit of a mess. I don’t think the way players usually beat her, is the way the fight was intended.

Abaddon in Nightfall was an alright boss fight. Not very hard, but it lasted long enough to feel like a boss fight. But overall, this fight was a big improvement over the other boss fights in the game.

Malyx the Unyielding was a challenging boss that was plagued by easy exploits, that allowed players to get him stuck, or fight from outside his room. The core concept was good, but this boss showed that it is really difficult to get a boss fight to be water tight. Players are just very creative when it comes to cheating.

The Great Destroyer at the end of Eye of the North died in 1 second due to Pain Inverter. This made a boss fight with cool mechanics (platforms in lava that disappear, so you need to keep moving) a complete joke.

Dhuum at the end of the Underworld (added very late in GW1’s lifespan) was probably one of the most fun and best bosses in the game. It had cool mechanics, looked epic, and had very clear boss tells.

See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mclHo0f6QA
(The moment the boss wakes up, you see Grenth’s reapers appear all around the room, to contain the defeated god of death. It’s sheer epicness. And I love the loud sounds of those screaming ritualist spirits. It’s as epic as boss fights got in GW1 I think.)

So yeah, boss fights definitely got better slowly. A lot of them suffered from being delivered with tight deadlines I suspect. But I personally think it wasn’t until Dhuum, that they had perfected boss fights in GW1.

haviz.1340:

Tequatl is the step forward? I guess it might be very engaging fight for someone.

In some way it is. It doesn’t scale right, but in term of mechanics and epicness, they’ve certainly ramped up the quality of the boss fight. It is a far better boss than it was before. And it is currently one of the more fun and challenging boss fights in the game.

Ups, I meant gw2. Sorry for making you write that wall.

Kanaxai and Urgoz were designed pretty well. Well, the Deep and Urgoz in general were designed pretty good all around (ignoring the fact that people figured out how to do them in 8 minutes or less on casual runs by the end of the game).

Dhuum was designed well, but it became a pretty gimmicky fight once you started using an Emo.

Mallyx was a pushover tbh and with a decent hero team, it was a pretty big joke. It was designed well though (with the effects in the room etc).

Rotscale was also designed well too imo, just like Verata.

The boss part of Hell’s Precipice was pretty good too, and the Lich wasn’t too bad tbh.

Ring of Fire was pretty well designed as well, although due to power creep you could just storm the front gate by the end of the game instead of running around.

Doppleganger was a pretty fun fight too (although there were ways to trivialize this fight as well).

Glint might have been a ‘meh’ boss (although I think she was okay), the entire mission and the run up there was designed pretty well.

There are plenty of examples of well designed bosses that were in the game early on.

I forgot about Urgoz and Kanaxai. Yeah, they were pretty fun (released during Factions).

The Doppleganger indeed was a lot of fun, although easily exploited since the Doppleganger could easily be made to spam useless skills on your skillbar. (The Doppleganger was basically a clone of the player, with the same skills as the player)

Rotscale didn’t actually become a boss until much later in the game. He was initially just a simple Bonedragon, without the huge amount of health and damage that he got later on.

haviz.1340:

Ups, I meant gw2. Sorry for making you write that wall.

Well that is a point I could argue about too. I think a lot of the dungeon bosses in GW2 lack phases, and proper boss tells (something we’ve had very long discussions about on its own, the topic of boss tells). Bosses are slowly getting better. Tequatl needs to scale better for instances that do not have the maximum number of players in them, but I do think he is a much better boss than the other dragon bosses.

Claw of Jormaq is epic, but a bit repetitive. They’ve recently boosted his health a bit I think, but until they add more mechanics to his fight, I don’t think I’ll bother with him any more. I really wish we could actually shoot him down ourselves, instead of the npc’s doing it for us.

The Shatterer has gotten better, but they still haven’t addressed the problem of players simply standing to his side. The biggest issue with the world bosses, is how they are so static.

Then there’s a few other world bosses, like the Fire Elemental, who was way too strong for his zone on launch (and he still is quite challenging). The giant Destroyer in mount Maelstrom, who is a pretty fun boss, but his reward chest was long overdue. The Shadow Behemoth, who is way too easy (but at least he no longer dies in one second now).

I hope that apart from an increase in health, we get to see more phases added to existing bosses. Tequatl shows that they are gradually working towards that.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The Doppleganger indeed was a lot of fun, although easily exploited since the Doppleganger could easily be made to spam useless skills on your skillbar. (The Doppleganger was basically a clone of the player, with the same skills as the player)

This one was really funny. Equip you character with health sacrificing skills and watch the doppelganger killing himself.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

haviz.1340:

Ups, I meant gw2. Sorry for making you write that wall.

Well that is a point I could argue about too. I think a lot of the dungeon bosses in GW2 lack phases, and proper boss tells (something we’ve had very long discussions about on its own, the topic of boss tells). Bosses are slowly getting better. Tequatl needs to scale better for instances that do not have the maximum number of players in them, but I do think he is a much better boss than the other dragon bosses.

Boss tells, yes. Something the original Bosses are really lacking. Look at the Golem in Caudecus Manor with his AOE Rocketlauncher skill hitting for massive damage. No animation. Or Kudus killing shot, you can’t really tell when he is diong it or who is the one being shot, just to pick the worst examples. Molten Berserker, Foreman Spur and Clockheart of Borg have really good Boss Tells or animations. Everytime they are doing something really dangerous or special you can see what they are doing. And now Tequatl has good tells, can take out an entire army but he isn’t impossible. He just could scale better for smaller groups. Servers who are doing Teq every day or every two hours, have no problems but other servers are screwed with him.

I think different phases would be awesome. If one Boss has a big health pool you could either invent a mechanic to make it more fun like Masticus or you can add different phases like the Lupicus Encounter, I’m not saying that Lupicus is a challenging Enounter or the best, but they did some things right. This one feels like a boss fight. and every phase feels unique. Something I’m missing from the original Bossfights.

Every epic boss (meaning stationary) will never be as good as normal bosses could be. Those epic bosses do not react at all, they just do their attacks, usually in same rotation. It’s pve in its worst state.

Stationary bosses versus mobile bosses are a difficult subject. Anet will always be limited by the technology. Having an enemy of that scale walk around and chasing players is just really difficult to do. I’ve worked on both kinds of bosses myself, and in a generic console game, static bosses can work just fine. They allow you to make a boss look huge and epic. And since the players are confined in a limited space, they’ll never get behind the boss, and the limitations aren’t blatantly exposed. But of course, this isn’t a console game. This is a large open world MMO, and players will attack the boss from multiple sides. And that makes bosses like Tequatl just look rooted in place (which they are).

One of the solutions my colleagues found for making static bosses less static, is the ability to let them target specific players. This however required a form of inverse kinematics, where a body part of a boss is moved/animated towards a player automatically, without premade animations. But this allowed a static boss to target specific players, and stomp his hand down on them. It made the boss acknowledge that the players were there, instead of spamming attacks that hit the whole zone.

What they could also do, is animate Tequatl to sometimes change his position. These could still be fixed positions, but this would allow Tequatl to leave his spot and stand somewhere else randomly.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Stationary bosses versus mobile bosses are a difficult subject. Anet will always be limited by the technology. Having an enemy of that scale walk around and chasing players is just really difficult to do. I’ve worked on both kinds of bosses myself, and in a generic console game, static bosses can work just fine. They allow you to make a boss look huge and epic. And since the players are confined in a limited space, they’ll never get behind the boss, and the limitations aren’t blatantly exposed. But of course, this isn’t a console game. This is a large open world MMO, and players will attack the boss from multiple sides. And that makes bosses like Tequatl just look rooted in place (which they are).

One of the solutions my colleagues found for making static bosses less static, is the ability to let them target specific players. This however required a form of inverse kinematics, where a body part of a boss is moved/animated towards a player automatically, without premade animations. But this allowed a static boss to target specific players, and stomp his hand down on them. It made the boss acknowledge that the players were there, instead of spamming attacks that hit the whole zone.

What they could also do, is animate Tequatl to sometimes change his position. These could still be fixed positions, but this would allow Tequatl to leave his spot and stand somewhere else randomly.

Stationary bosses will always be less interesting than mobile one, that’s not difficutl at all to argue. And game engine already uses inverse kinematics, how else would your character move properly?

haviz.1340:

Stationary bosses will always be less interesting than mobile one, that’s not difficutl at all to argue. And game engine already uses inverse kinematics, how else would your character move properly?

They don’t need to be though. Some of the stationary bosses in God of War are awesome. And they are less prone to bugs, like getting stuck in scenery. But it does take extra coding to allow static bosses to interact directly with the players. Some of the positioning in GW2 seems to already use inverse kinematics (for placing your feet on the ground), but that’s different from making a boss actually reach over and stomp on top of a specific player. That would need to be custom coded I think.

The best bosses in the game were around at release. Lupicus, Risen Priest of Melandru, Statue of Dwayna and Tribune Burntclaw.

I will admit i quite liked the idea of debuffing Mai Trin to dps her but they ruined that encounter with the stupid timegated cannon phases. Also Final bosses of Molten facility were fairly fun. Everything else including Tequatl has been pretty dissapointing. I can kind of get behind the bosses in the Aetherpath but the rest of the dungeon is so awful I havent touched it again since it was first released. Also they removed TAFU for it and Vevina was another one of their best bosses.

Oxxy.7068:

Aegis, cleansing, protection, AoE healing from water fields (that are pretty strong, actually, just not “lol i pressed 1 and my team is fully healed!” strong that most mmo players are used to), blinds, projectiles defenses

Aegis, reflection and cleansing are effective, but it’s hard to keep applying aegis to defend attacks, and reflections kinda force you to stay close to the skill area to work

Protection is good, but some monsters deal way too much damage, so you are going to get downed with 2-3 hits anyway. Same goes to blind, but the case here is that it loses effectiveness depending on the monster class

AoE heal from water field heals well, but you need blast finishers to use them. It’s awesome, but not really reliable

Good, every support skill has good and bad points, that’s normal. But think about a team, I hardly see a guardian with hammer, thieves with blinds, warhorn rangers. It seems that dealing damage is the most important thing
Helping others should be more rewarding

GW1 had better dungeons than GW2, period. Not only were the dungeons better designed in every aspect (including rewards), but GW1 also enjoyed the success of perfecting the ‘Trinity’ system.

Trinity meant that everyone was held equally responsible in their roles, and this produced better team-work in dungeons. It was also quite satisfying seeing this system scale with difficulty, as in the elite dungeons where most teams would normally take 3 healers out of a part of 12. In most cases, different elites were used on the healers as well. GW1 diverse builds allowed trinity to shine fully.

GW2 doesn’t have a Trinity nor a diverse build system, so it will never come close to GW1 in delivering player satisfaction. Living story is great from a business standpoint but I don’t think the majority of the players welcome it too much.

I wouldn’t call Gw1 a trinity game.

You had healers and protters, sure, but there was no designated tank, not taunting, no “usual tank” tools in other words. Even worse, any spell casted on “tank” moved aggro on caster of such spell, and proximity was often ingored in favour of focusing lighter armor classes or targets identified as backline by AI.

Sure, there were some limited situations were you could use a tank specced character (see: SC), but in the “regular” HM pve, you never had “the guy carrying 50 mobs on his back to keep them away from party nuking them”.
Most teambuilds relied on spirits or minions for that.

So, imo, Gw1 had a half trinity system: healers/protters backline, then free for all. Surely splitting properly roles and skill usage was able to improve dramatically the perfomances….and that’s why even in a 8-man party build skill choices of everyone were so important.

And i wouldn’t mind at all having this halfway (but greatly working) structure come back in Gw2, tbh.

HELLruler.4820:

Aegis, reflection and cleansing are effective, but it’s hard to keep applying aegis to defend attacks, and reflections kinda force you to stay close to the skill area to work

You’re not supposed to mitigate everything with aegis, but it is good to use it when you know someone is being focused by big, single-hit spells from bosses. Or to avoid some high hitting AoE on your group. Also, you should stay close to your group not only because of aegis.

HELLruler.4820:

Protection is good, but some monsters deal way too much damage, so you are going to get downed with 2-3 hits anyway. Same goes to blind, but the case here is that it loses effectiveness depending on the monster class

Protection is somewhat the same deal with aegis (but protection is better against smaller and faster hits), it is meant to mitigate some damage, not all of it, you should still be trying to avoid being hit, but if you do get hit protection will give you extra time to recover. Blinds should be chained on trash mobs/bosses without defiant, not “i did it once and that’s about it”.

HELLruler.4820:

AoE heal from water field heals well, but you need blast finishers to use them. It’s awesome, but not really reliable

Depends on your team comp and weapons, usually a single LH ele should blast an engie field two times (each blast heals for 1400HP with zero healing power at lv80), and two or three times on ranger’s. You can also blast via other classes, but these blasts are usually used prior to engaging. The only thing i don’t like about water fields is that they’re hard to come by, but it’s not like you actually need healing from water fields aside from really tight situations.

HELLruler.4820:

Good, every support skill has good and bad points, that’s normal. But think about a team, I hardly see a guardian with hammer, thieves with blinds, warhorn rangers. It seems that dealing damage is the most important thing
Helping others should be more rewarding

Hammer guardians are very situational, but thieves should be spamming blinds and any half-good ranger should be using warhorn. TBH if you don’t see these things (field usage, blinds and uh… warhorn rangers) very often you’re playing with bad or unexperienced people.
fast edit: the only thing i don’t like about supporting in this game is that you don’t NEED any of it to complete content. I’d be nice if some stuff forced you to take combos/healing more seriously.

I’ve never really played MMOs before, Guild Wars 2 was reccommended to me by a friend. A free weekend happened and so I started playing and fell in love with the PvE content…until dungeons.

I’ve played some nasty dungeons, I do Dungeons and Dragons, I’ve MADE nasty as kitten dungeons. These dungeons are not nasty, they’re not fun, the fact stacking is sometimes the only viable option is laughable.

I’d rather fight a god kitten Deathclaw with a 9 millimeter pistol in Fallout New Vegas as a level 5 than deal with Ascalon Catacombs as a kittening level 80.

adrian.4962:

When it comes to leveling content this game is awesome. Events, no questing with npcs, lv to map scalling. It doesn’t even compare to Wow like games with kill 5 rats of this get 8 pelts and talk again with the npc. Individual resources, tagged mobs for kills and so on make this game very enjoyable to play.

And then you get to dungon part….omg. Was this even made by the same team? Did they even planned to add dungeons when they started working at this game?

Seriously they can make dynamic events that can scale from 1 to 20 players but for some reason they suck to bad at making dungeons. For some reason Arena decided to shove 5 players in a party to do a dungeon. None of them has a specific role so why 5, why on 6 or 3 players? There isn’t a need for tanks or healers so why 5?

The first big mistake was to say they dropped the tank/healer/dps. This made World of Warcraft a game with 10 mil subscribers and that’s what keeps it going, they have good dungeons and raids. There aren’t enough tanks or healers but somehow the game keeps going despite been 8 years old.

Without tank/healer/dps roles this game won’t end up well.

You start with the low lv maps and say this game is awsome, then you see the “end game content” or the awful Orr maps and you want to cancel the subscription. At least Arena had enough brains to no add a subscription for this game because it would have been another 1 month subscription mmo.

Three things.

Dungeons were meant to be played with five players because Anet has said that other games have five player parties and they don’t want to disband these players from playing content in the same group. It is also the case, in my opinion, that with five players you are able to have a good balance between relying too heavily on one group member’s actions to not worrying at all because “that other player” (implying there are more than an “skillful” number) will eat up the damage for me.

The holy trinity doesn’t ruin Guild Wars. It encourages dynamic play. A lack of the holy trinity forces each player to worry about their own health and contribution to the group. I think it removes some of the monotony if you hve played within the holy trinit structure – One person is aggroing, multiple people are spamming heals, and the rest of the party is hitting their “do the most damage skill.” I highly enjoy the engaging combat Guild Wars 2 offers (spare large scale WvW).

All the content is “end game”. You can enjoy a challenge and good rewards from level one. You will be disappointed to find “end game content” spare fractals or PvP or whichever your cup of tea is.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

. Control and conditions first and fore most. Defiant/Unshakable needs to be changed, and the condition cap needs to be resolved.

I really think that the solutions to control would really be pretty easy to implement but might also be pretty unforgiving.
Some examples:
-Boss with ability that player should interrupt (those should be really telegraphed ) .
-Interruptions changing the boss phase (for example in the edge of the mist live stream there is a elite griffon switching between Air and Land phase ,being invulnerable in the air and stuns prolonging the land phase. In fact there are a lot of really interesting mob mechanics in the Edge of the Mist live stream(pretty ironic that wvw team seems more able to create interesting small group encounters )).

Teckos.1305:

I really think that the solutions to control would really be pretty easy to implement but might also be pretty unforgiving.
Some examples:
-Boss with ability that player should interrupt (those should be really telegraphed ) .
-Interruptions changing the boss phase (for example in the edge of the mist live stream there is a elite griffon switching between Air and Land phase ,being invulnerable in the air and stuns prolonging the land phase. In fact there are a lot of really interesting mob mechanics in the Edge of the Mist live stream(pretty ironic that wvw team seems more able to create interesting small group encounters )).

I would definitely welcome such changes. What a lot of the boss encounters currently lack, is depth and phases. I’d love to see a boss that requires clever control skill use. Bosses simply shouldn’t be immune to CC 90% of the fight. I’d rather see CC find a use within the boss mechanics. And enemies with a land and air phase would be awesome. This could also perhaps make ranged weapons have more of a function in dungeons.

The dungeons were supposed to be explorable but were made into 3 separate paths with linear events and an end boss. This can be seen mostly in AC where you have a room of chickens or w/e, a random troll bursting through the wall and an entire room after the last boss that has nothing in it. The way I imagined it was supposed to be was you had to explore every inch of the map to find hidden bosses, puzzles and other things that rotated to different parts of the map every new instance.

9 time out of 10 if there is something you don’t like about gw2 it is probably because the game was rushed in the beginning or can be traced back to that reason. Gw2 needed at least another year of development.

Dromar.1027:

9 time out of 10 if there is something you don’t like about gw2 it is probably because the game was rushed in the beginning or can be traced back to that reason. Gw2 needed at least another year of development.

THIS. This is the main reason why we don’t have really interesting fights. Look at the original dungeons. Some bosses have intersting ideas but they didn’t play with the idea and most of the fights feel like placeholder.
And when we look at the bounty hunt fights, the fractal fights, the ones from the temporary dungeons and the aetherpath, you can see that anet can create intersting bossfights, they only need time for this. Even the champions in the tower have mechanics suited for dungeon fights, like the Spider who can trap players and eat them.

Walhalla.5473:

THIS. This is the main reason why we don’t have really interesting fights. Look at the original dungeons. Some bosses have intersting ideas but they didn’t play with the idea and most of the fights feel like placeholder.
And when we look at the bounty hunt fights, the fractal fights, the ones from the temporary dungeons and the aetherpath, you can see that anet can create intersting bossfights, they only need time for this. Even the champions in the tower have mechanics suited for dungeon fights, like the Spider who can trap players and eat them.

In my humble opinion, the best bosses in the game were already at the launch.

Honestly, as a GW1 player for about 7 years: Bosses were never anet’s strenght. Most ‘bosses’ in GW1 were just stronger versions of their normal counterparts. There are a few exceptions and it got a bit better with the introduction of dungeons in the EotN addon.

But I always complained about interesting boss fights. There are other games that did this much better. It is still very unpleasing that GW2 now still has only one single really interesing instanced boss (Lupi).

There are however the bosses from the new dungeons like Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat. It shows that they have the potential to do it right. The initial dungeons just seem a bit rushed, don’t get me wrong. They have nice art design (one thing I think most ppl can second), but there are some really extremel boring and annoying bosses, HP sponges with utterly boring mechanics, just try HotW path 2…