Guild Wars 2

I know some of you are going to disagree but the recent boss introduction ever since the glints lair have relied on really gimmicky mechanics to drag out the fight. What usually happens is the player ends up spending most of the time not actually fighting the boss but instead running around sort of like a headless chicken doing menial tasks like luring an AI to a pylon, or running around with a light up my kitten just to lure the boss up to beat on for 2 seconds.

Now don’t get me wrong, i prefer a challenge like everyone else but this isn’t challenging at all, its boring and needlessly pads out a boss fight. I firmly believe that bosses should stand on their own merit when it comes to the fight. Anyone who played dark souls would know what i mean. In that game, boss fights consist of you and the boss in the room and nothing more.

Since Glint’s Lair? Someone hasn’t been paying attention. Chapter 2, the Fort Salma fight: that last mordrem has a shield and only Marjory’s golems can bring it down. That was pretty gimmicky, even if you could generally take the thing down quickly once the shield was removed. I’m pretty sure every final boss fight in the living world had some mechanic that made it different, and unlike every other instance of bosses pre-Living World. Don’t make it seem like this started last November.

Rognik.2579:

Since Glint’s Lair? Someone hasn’t been paying attention. Chapter 2, the Fort Salma fight: that last mordrem has a shield and only Marjory’s golems can bring it down. That was pretty gimmicky, even if you could generally take the thing down quickly once the shield was removed. I’m pretty sure every final boss fight in the living world had some mechanic that made it different, and unlike every other instance of bosses pre-Living World. Don’t make it seem like this started last November.

Yea your right, its way before glints lair but either way its not a well done mechanic at all unless Anets goal is make mind numbing boss fights.

If you find the mechanics Gimmicky what is your proposed alternative?

How would you design a boss fight so that
-The player can’t just stand still
-High damage does not allow you to negate the fights difficulty/mechanics.
-The fight takes longer than an average trash encounter.

Conski Deshan.2057:

If you find the mechanics Gimmicky what is your proposed alternative?

How would you design a boss fight so that
-The player can’t just stand still
-High damage does not allow you to negate the fights difficulty/mechanics.
-The fight takes longer than an average trash encounter.

Bosses along the line of lupi would probably be a good start. Obviously it shouldn’t have 1.1 million life. Maybe a boss with 500kish hp with multiple hard hitting attacks, some easily telegraphed and some not so much. Have the bosses move around when he wants to use a certain attack might get the player to move etc….

Basically make reacting and proactive gameplay as well as knowledge be the deciding factor of bossfights.

Also while we are at it, make the bosses actually failable too. The last boss in the living story can pretty much be body zerged which completely eliminated any sort of tension with it.

Lupi was too gimmicky too. Just bring back the bosses where I can face tank and auto attack while semi AFK please!

Read the dozen recent threads about how LS bosses are too hard, and you’ll understand why they’re done like this.

These are bosses with mechanics, but without being too difficult overall.

Olvendred.3027:

Read the dozen recent threads about how LS bosses are too hard, and you’ll understand why they’re done like this.

These are bosses with mechanics, but without being too difficult overall.

Just imagine what would happen, if the Boss Fights in HoT will have more Mechanics and are harder. I saw people crying over the Slick and Sparki Fight in the Aetherpath for being “too gimmicky” and I saw one who said that in the Barradin Fight, that the Add Mechanic was too gimmicky because he just wanted to nuke down the Boss.

When I first saw this thread my initial reaction was, “god kitten it, not this again.”
Then I realized you were talking about the fights being “gimmicky,” not being hard.

And you know what? You’re 100% correct, these fights are gimmicks.

For the purpose of this thread I’m going to posit that a fight is “gimmicky” when

1. The mechanics are obvious
2. The mechanics have to be repeated numerous times and/or have long periods between which they can be triggered (for example the Facet of Darkness throws out the Fragility “buff/debuff” something like once every 45-60 seconds).
3. The mechanics require little to no use of the player character’s weapon skills, utilities or traits (looking at you again void crystals…)
4. And the player is in little to no actual danger.

I would argue that nearly every boss in Living Story Season 2 fits some (or in some cases all) of these criteria.

As Olvendred stated above me, there have been a lot of threads about the difficulty level of the Season 2 Bosses (not just lately, but basically throughout the whole season). And (in the ones where I’ve participated) I’ve basically argued that the fights were done this way on purpose.

As I argued in this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Ls-too-hard/first#post4758108, the Guild Wars 2 playerbase has a long history of freaking out whenever Anet produces a fight that involves more than “stack and auto-attack” tactics (I like to think of it as the GWs version of “Tank and Spank,” from other games, haha). I’m talking about things like The Marionette, The Watchwork Assault Knights, all of Aetherblade Path, even stuff we have “on farm” now like the upgraded Tequatl and the Evolved Jungle Wurm (people mewled about those for months.)

These LS boss fights, I don’t think that they’re meant for player’s like you and I; players who (as consumers) have a great deal of experience/familiarity with video games, game design, and commonly used game mechanics (basically the type of player who only needs a few moments to look at something before they “recognize” what to do from past experiences in other games).

Instead I think the Arena Net developers are using Living Story Season 2 to do now what they should have done during the original Personal Story: create a progression of fights, obstacles, and encounters that gradually teach every player the type of skills (both mechanical skills and critical thinking skills) they’ll need to overcome harder fights/encounters/obstacles in the future.

So I genuinely believe these fights are meant to be gimmicky. They’re meant to force players to look around at what’s happening in their surroundings (what’s this big red shield on my mini-map? Why can’t I break this big invulnerability shield? When I step in this big purple field I get hurt really bad; I wonder what all these floating colorful stones are for?) and figure out how to use those environmental objects to beat the bosses, rather than their #1 skill.

For some people, these fights are going to be “gimmicky, easy, stupid, or outright dumb” to other players it might be the first time they’ve been asked to think/play this way and it’s going to feel really hard. But it’s just liking sitting through a lesson at school: some people already know all this kitten and think the lesson is pointless, some people are seeing this stuff for the first time but pick it up quickly irregardless, and others are seeing for the first time and are completely overwhelmed.

But the lesson isn’t about individual players, it’s about raising the skill level of the player base as a whole. As the old adage goes “you’re only as strong as you’re weakest link;” Arena Net can only produce content that “the average” player can overcome. Otherwise we’re just going to keep getting endless kittenstorms of frustration from both “hardcore” and “casual” players as big events fail again and again and nobody is getting what they want— if they’re still around to be found, all the old threads about the Marionette are a perfect example of this. Everybody was mad at everybody and it was all “wailing and gnashing of teeth” everywhere…

So if you’re one of the players who finds this new content “easy” or “gimmicky” or “boring” or “tedious,” just hang in there; everyone else just needs a little time to catch up. But once they have, we’re going to see “healthier,” better, more engaging content in the future.
And if you’re one of the players who’s frustrated to the point of tears, just hang in there! Take a deep breath and remember that there’s a whole community of players who are absolutely eager to lend you a hand. Just be sure you’re coming to the forums, or map chat, or whatever with a genuine request (“This fight is hard, anyone have any advice?”) rather than with a tantrum (“This fight is hard and therefore stupid and bad!”).

There is nothing wrong with boss fights being gimmicky. Requiring boss fights to involve more then reflexes is actually a good thing.

I pretty much agree with everything Krestfallen has said. Yeah, the fights are gimmicky, but gimmicky boss fights serve their purpose, especially if Arenanet plans on delivering the so-called “challenging group content” in HoT.

I do think they need to seriously consider adding a Hard/Heroic Mode in the future though. I mean, some of the achievements are already pretty challenging, and I certainly appreciate that, but there should be a way to play the content in a truly heroic manner (without simply buffing hit points and power of enemies). Or do the inverse and make an Easy/Story Mode that allows players to simply go through the story without worrying too much about skill, equipment, etc. which would allow them to scale up difficulty of the normal mode a bit more. Or, you know, add both. Right now, things are just sitting uncomfortably somewhere in between making sure the content is casual enough while still trying to entertain the hardcore players, and that simply doesn’t work all that well.

I think SAB, for all its faults, was a pretty good proof of concept. You had infantile mode, which let you experience all of the maps without having to deal with the harder jumping puzzles and areas, you had normal mode for those who wanted all the goodies and were willing to put the effort in, and then you had tribulation mode, which isn’t necessarily any sort of benchmark for difficulty (but it was a sort of challenge).

To be fair it is kind of dissatisfying to have you gear all set up for getting DPS and taking hits, and then realizing most of the fight doesn’t really involve your gear at all, it’s part of the reason i don’t run all zerk. Often your own DPS doesn’t matter as much as surviving to do some mechanic the boss has.

That said I understand their place. Perhaps a change to mechanics to let your gear have more say in the more gimmicky encounters would be nice. Like swiftness allowing actions to be done faster, or something.

yanipheonu.5798:

To be fair it is kind of dissatisfying to have you gear all set up for getting DPS and taking hits, and then realizing most of the fight doesn’t really involve your gear at all, it’s part of the reason i don’t run all zerk. Often your own DPS doesn’t matter as much as surviving to do some mechanic the boss has.

That said I understand their place. Perhaps a change to mechanics to let your gear have more say in the more gimmicky encounters would be nice. Like swiftness allowing actions to be done faster, or something.

the swiftness in gear does help, allows you to get out of those danger zones quicker.

healing means you’re less likely be downed (since it does take a couple hits tbf)

for once zerk isn’t “the” way to get passed bosses, and..despite my previous thread (I still stand by some of my comments there.)
they are doing these encounters to help move away from “zerk only”…obviously that still has it’s place. and I’m not against it, but it’s nice that there isn’t realy an advantage to being one gear type of another.

cept swiftness, I think in this case, that probably would help quite a bit.

Conski Deshan.2057:

If you find the mechanics Gimmicky what is your proposed alternative?

How would you design a boss fight so that
-The player can’t just stand still
-High damage does not allow you to negate the fights difficulty/mechanics.
-The fight takes longer than an average trash encounter.

Just to name 2 fights (because they’re the only ‘gimmicky’ ones I’ve gotten to so far), The Fort Salma boss, speed up the minions, they are far too slow, and add a little more time before the boss puts it’s shield back up. And the Possessed Statue boss in episode 3 of season 2, add more time between Menders. They pop way too quickly.

Again, just my 2 cents worth.

I’m guessing that season 2 is actually full of fights that I will, as in the 2 mentioned above, /ragequit and seek help for. Although I did finally solo the Fort Salma one but it took a VERY LONG time.

I play for relaxation and fun and when the fights become aggravating or annoying, it takes all the fun out of it.

punkinkatt.4823:

Conski Deshan.2057:

If you find the mechanics Gimmicky what is your proposed alternative?

How would you design a boss fight so that
-The player can’t just stand still
-High damage does not allow you to negate the fights difficulty/mechanics.
-The fight takes longer than an average trash encounter.

Just to name 2 fights (because they’re the only ‘gimmicky’ ones I’ve gotten to so far), The Fort Salma boss, speed up the minions, they are far too slow, and add a little more time before the boss puts it’s shield back up. And the Possessed Statue boss in episode 3 of season 2, add more time between Menders. They pop way too quickly.

Again, just my 2 cents worth.

I’m guessing that season 2 is actually full of fights that I will, as in the 2 mentioned above, /ragequit and seek help for. Although I did finally solo the Fort Salma one but it took a VERY LONG time.

I play for relaxation and fun and when the fights become aggravating or annoying, it takes all the fun out of it.

In the fort Salma mechanic the objective is to get you to switch from offence to defence, with an escort style mechanic, done correctly it only takes 2-4 rounds of this which I’d consider not repetitive.
The time allotted seems in line with what a solid damage output should burn down in 2-4 rounds. If a player is taking longer than that it may clue them in that they may need to take a look at their build.

The statue/menders again try to get you to split between two targets and encourage you to use situational awareness. As with the other mechanic the boss should be dead with 2-4 menders if they are not, or the player has been unable to kill the menders in a timely fashion it alerts the player that something is wrong with their set-up.

I personally feel most of the mechanics in LS2 fulfilled their intended purpose quite well. What I do see a lot of is players running in not being observant or making any use of the tools* available to them and then immediately placing the blame on the game and not themselves.

*by tools I mean utilities,builds,traits etc , attempting all the content with the same build is easily possible but the game designs the encounters so that you can build a specific build to get through it easier if you’re struggling.

Introducing new mechanics is a good thing. Stacking and killing everything eventually does get boring.