Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

Draegan_sl said:

It really depends on how they plan on scripting the raids. In the last 6 years or so we've seen raids become more and more finely tuned. You need 1000 Raid DPS to win and if you have 999 you auto-lose to enrage. If Jimmy dies or misses a cue, you lose. If timmy misses an interrupt, you might as well wipe.

It's hard to balance fun with difficulty but it's not impossible. A hard raid encounter doesn't have to be defined by how flawless you are. There are a lot of different things you can do if you just use your imagination and have a bit of development help behind just scripting encounters. Here are a few examples:

A)Timed events with tiered rewards- Raid Boss A (or Encounter A, doesn't have to be a single boss) has 10 phases and you have 10 minutes to complete all of them. If you wipe on phase 1, 2, 3 you get nothing. If you wipe on p4 you get loot from table A. p5 on table A+B, p6 on table A+B+C. Essentially the higher you go, the more loot you get.

B)Multiple group gauntlets- This could be timed or not, but essentially you break your raid down into individual groups. Could be 4 groups of 10 or 8 groups of 5, it doesn't matter. Build a portion of the raid so that it splits off into four different sections. It could be simple passageways, or bigger areas, or "dimensions" you have to enter and win. Doesn't matter. Each group needs to fight their way to the end. Each group needs to be successful in order to continue on. Here's one example.

You enter a large throne room and the princess is locked up by four energy chains. By the base of each chain is a portal to an instanced area that acts as a pocket of whatever (insert lore here) where the chain is bound. It's a 40 man raid so you can take up to 15 people into each instance, but it's geared for 10. Instance one is a "Jungle" that you have to fight through waves of mobs to get to the end where the Jungle King is protecting the chain's energy source. Think about the temple sequence in that's in ZulFurrack in WOW.

Instance two consists of jumping puzzles and platforms. Get to the top, unlock the chain. You can design it so you need 10 people to complete it, where 9 people need to channel certain portions of the puzzle to unlock the final piece.

Instance three can be "arena" style boss fights. Like 10 people need to defeat the previous 9 bosses in the instance in miniature form. Instance four can be some other puzzle or gauntlet like event.

Oh ho ho, then you can do all sorts of things with this. If group A finishes with one instance, they can split up and help out other groups. Or you can make all of these timed, and if you beat the time you get extra rewards.

Then once the chains are complete you unlock Bowser and you have to beat him to save the princess.

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There are a lot of other ideas out there for raid/dungeon design that I think could be hilariously fun. You can make a dungeon with a ton of trash, but trash that dies really fast like in DDO/Neverwinter and just toss waves of it at groups and if you beat them all in a certain time or beat them without dying you can unlock different mini bosses. Raids need more minibosses anyway and less shitty boring trash.

Essentially more GW2 like encounters in place of trash pulls.

You can also incorporate Zelda like dungeons where your raid needs to split up and jump around to unlock different portions of the map. Get keys to unlock doors. Limit certain areas to X amount of people. Use the housing interface that Wildstar seems to have, to build things within the raid to make platforms to jump up to certain areas. You can make boss encounters have different phases that you unlock. So if a boss has 4 phases and you wipe on phase 3, you don't start all over again, but you start on phase 3 again. Then put a counter on it, so if you fail 3 times on phase 3 you go back down to 2. This way you can design really long encounters that are fun, but not force groups to re-do each one every single time you make a mistake.

There is a ton of stuff you can do outside of just having boss mechanics and hallways of trash mobs. Developers just need to create tools that allow this sort of thing. Wildstar SEEMS to have the right attitude of creating challenge and not caring if everyone can't beat the dungeon.

Lang rant sorry, but I could play these DIKU games and the raid game if devs just made dungeons more fun. How many times have you played through a Zelda dungeon and only have fun at the boss? Those fucking dungeons were entertaining from beginning to end. There is no real need to innovate combat/classes as much as innovating the content to not be retarded.

edit to add:
As others have mentioned how enrage timers suck. They do, and it's a retarded encounter. That's why you have "timed" events. If you defeat an encounter in the designed amount of time, then you get Reward tier A, if you took an hour to beat it, then you get Reward Tier B. Of course you should keep the enrage timers on some encounters. Some encounters should be difficult and you should be forced to beat it a certain way, but EVERY encounter doesn't have to have one.

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Sabbat_sl said:

Draegan's option A sounds exactly like WoWs current model. LFR > Normal > Heroic. Three separate tiers you can compete on, to get the loot you want. Sure, the "timed" mechanic is different, but it's essentially the same thing. You want better loot? do shit harder. We all know how that little scenario gets played out in the end.

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