Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

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Quiv
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Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Quiv »

I rarely post on official forums because I know:

1- I really am ignorant to a lot of things so I don't pretend my feedback is going to change the World (of warcraft)
2- even if I did have world changing feedback, it'll likely be missed.

However the PTR discussion on Oondasta caught my attention because Oondasta seems to be suffering from a concept conflict that prevents him from being defeated.

I posted in that thread (pasted below) but wanted to see what y'all think about it. I explain further below but it seems Blizzard is wanting feedback on the fight itself, but they won't be able to get it as long as:

1- Oondasta remains faction tapped and drawing in bystanders to join the fight
2- Oondasta has a punishing ability that wipes groups because of the disorganized players that got drawn in.

My post (good god i wish I knew how to be concise):
With respect, I think the conflicting design of faction tapping on a boss that is challenging/punishing is artificially raising Oondasta's difficulty and therefore directly affecting the fact he apparently hasn't been killed yet, which in turn affects whether or not mechanics feedback can be gathered. I wouldn't be surprised if he stays undefeated as long as he keeps mechanics that a few ungrouped individuals can ignorant or intentionally cause raid wipes... and as long as Oondasta remains faction tapped, engaging him will always attract ungrouped (and by extension, disorganized) players to join.

Faction tapping is an amazing concept to me, and I love it. However it directly promotes disorganization. If a world boss is so meaningful and challenging (a desire I sympathize with) that he requires organization/strategy, yet remains faction tapped so any bystander can come in (and want to come in) for kill credit and thereby accidentally wipe the effort... those two aspects of the fight may be so much in conflict that kills (and discussion on the fight itself) aren't reasonable to expect.

Unless part of the expected designed difficulty of Oondasta is pulling him and being lucky that no faction bystander joins in and wipes your organized effort. A low population PTR may be lucky enough to accomplish this but requiring no outside interference to defeat a faction tapped boss for a kill seems counter intuitive. I know mechanics feedback is wanted more than conceptual, but the conflict between the two may be directly impeding the desired feedback until addressed? Maybe organized groups that wipe due to unorganized bystanders (who are drawn in by faction tapping) can't get far enough in to the fight to give meaningful feedback?

I don't know, I know nothing about encounter design, but maybe giving him a mechanic that is personally punishing for individuals may better serve fights that attract ungrouped disorganized players? Or maybe something like a punishing version of Feng's Arcane Resonance, which can allow players to react and move if they happen to be too close to others. Having a boss that draws in disorganized players, but also has an ability that can wipe based on disorganization seems like artificial raising Oondasta's difficulty, nor does it seem like a proper challenge.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Slickrock »

Well, they are adding it to get rid of the mess they created with tap sharing, which is just as prone to griefing.

I got a Galleon kill last night, but I got screamed at because I couldn't invite everyone to the group in time. So to fix that, faction tapping seems like a reasonable solution.

You also have to remember with Oondasta, you are likely going to need more that 40 people to kill him, so you can't rely on a raid group tag to kill him either. Based on the indications they've given, you might need over 100.

Yes, disorganization might create problems with the fight, but I think it's too early to call for major mechanics changes. Otherwise the fight might simply become a stack 200 people and burn him down.

This one is likely gonna need to go live before they get it really tested.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Quiv »

I am 100% for faction tap. Tag sharing was messy from day one.

Disorganization is directly causing wipes due to that chain lightning beam he has. It is being griefed, but one bystander can join the fight, bounce the beam into melee and game over. One person, by complete accident. However you have to expect bystanders to come in and not be organized, and if their disorganization can cause one ability to wipe the raid (and PTR is seeing this already by griefers and those ignorant alike), killing it becomes unreasonable.

At this level, we can't zerg it with just more people, and stacking will be instant wipe. The more people you have, the more chance you have to bounce that beam, and with the 50% damage addition per bounce and 20 target upper bounce limit... just not going to work. It may indeed require more than 40, but again more people equals more chances to bounce the beam and its the beam thats wiping people

I don't have any problem with the rest of the fight. The problem is that chaining beam.

Youre probably right on live testing. I cringe to hear the crying on the forums about it but PTR population is just so low for this kind of thing.
Last edited by Quiv on Sat Feb 23, 2013 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Quiv »

I hate doing it, but I edited the post. I didn't want to give the impression I was against faction tap.

However an unfortunate and inevitable byproduct of faction tap is stray unorganized players. As long as Spiritfire Beam chains and wipes out 15-20 players every time due to a disorganized player (or griefer), the conflict will remain.

And if graveyard zerging is required (or even assumed) with a boss kill, that is just as messy to me.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Slickrock »

What I expect the strat might be is to group people in small clumps, so one clump can get wiped out, and not spread it to others.

The mechanic is indeed intended to prevent a full zerg, but the other parts of the fight almost require a zerg, so it will be interesting to see what happens with it.

But having a fight that is as tough or tougher than the old world dragons back in the day is a good thing. A LOT better than the zerg on Galleon.

I have the interesting opportunity of being in a huge guild (1000+ accounts) so once this hits live, I'm sure we'll organize an attempt, and wipe gloriously.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Quiv »

I wonder if Blizzard designed this fight with deaths in mind as mandatory. There are other abilities that make me wonder this, not just the beam.

Oondasta cannot be taunted, but that armor crush ability (name escapes me) means that he can't be one tanked. I don't know if a tank can reasonably soak a second stack of the crush, but even if he does, is the strat to let that tank solo tank until he dies or just have him stop attacking when he gets 1-2 stacks and let tank #2 outthreat him? And with a 1 minute debuff, it may require a 3 tank rotation doing this.

I usually don't care much about encounter difficulty but this bad ass plus faction tapping really caught my eye. The two attempts I got on him made it very clear he was no trifle.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Zhinru »

Faction tap is what should be on every mob in this game. One of the things GW2 did very right was making you no longer afraid of seeing other players out in the world, and lack of taps was a big, big part of that. Well, if you HAVE TO have more than one faction in game, then make it a faction tap, so you resent only the opposite faction. That would work too.

You know what shouldn't be in this game? (I mean, apart from an artificial faction divide) Mechanics that punish you for either the slightest mistake, or punish the whole group for one mistake of one player. Oondasta is supposed to be "challenging" but if you drop him in the outside world, you should have taken into account organisation of groups downing him will never be the same as inside raids. There WILL be random people dropping in, or even opposite faction trying to mess you up. Dropping a really hardcore mechanic in that situation is just dumb. I'm sorry but it is. Unless you try to down him at 2 AM when everyone who isn't (to quote a thread on official forums) a "jobless degenerate" is asleep, you are NOT going to defeat him.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Quiv »

It may be they just don't expect many people to down him week by week.

From: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/860845 ... -2_11_2013
It may be worth noting though that one of the world bosses, Oondasta, is intended to be crazy-difficult. If you’re not in an organized Heroic-level raid group and teaming up with other Heroic-level raid groups, you’re going to want to stick to the other world boss, Nalak...
I understand heroic content for the few % of heroic raiders, that doesn't bother me. However making a "crazy-difficult" open world boss seems odd to me.

There are going to be people on this island grinding bones. They will join when Oondasta is engaged. And between beam and frill, they will wipe the raid. What kills me is a few stray players attracted by faction tap can wipe organized heroic-level raids.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Bulletdance »

I dunno imo if he's a "super heroic level boss you need a heroic level team to beat" he should be in a heroic raid...not a world boss that promotes strangers who may not even know that who are excited and want to help to join in and then get yelled at by the people they wiped or something.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by SylviaDragon »

I’m all for tough world bosses. (Love & miss the dragons) but damn Blizz, you crazy. O.o I could see this being an awesome fight within a raid but this guy sounds like he will go down when hell freezes over as things stand right now.
There will always be players passing by who will want to join in and they can ruin everyone’s day. I can easily see players of both factions running in just to troll the raid and I can promise you right now that there will be no possible way for someone to do this on a pvp server or a dead server like mine, that lacks serious raiders.
As it is right now, I sometimes struggle on sha and gal simply because of the massive world lag they generate. What will that be like once things become faction tagged? Players could get sucked into the lag vortex and wipe a raid not because they were clueless or mean, but simply because they couldn’t move. It all sounds very counterintuitive to the whole reason blizz is giving us a faction tag. They would have to make the fight phased just to give raiders a fighting chance.

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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Slickrock »

I suggest we give it some time to play out.. some valid concerns have been expressed, but at the same time, it would be nice to have this kind of uber-challenge world boss, that isn't downed every 15 minutes the way Sha is now, and Galleon would be if he spawned regularly.

Give it a chance... if it's nothing but griefing, Blizz will make changes.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Wain »

I wonder if it might work better if there was a initiating mechanic that required a raid group to start. I don't know *what* that mechanic would be, exactly. Just something that would ensure there's at least an organized core to the fight, even if others join the fight later without having to join the group.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Kalliope »

Wain wrote:I wonder if it might work better if there was a initiating mechanic that required a raid group to start. I don't know *what* that mechanic would be, exactly. Just something that would ensure there's at least an organized core to the fight, even if others join the fight later without having to join the group.
The mechanic already exists, too, in the form of raid group requirements for entering instances. Probably wouldn't be too hard to alter some code to require a raid group with a certain number of level 90s in it.

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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Novikova »

I'm sort of torn on this one. It wouldn't be hard for factions to grief one another with it. I wish folks who help with the kill could all just get a goodie bag, then we can all go home and have cookies while still battling the big bad.

This sounds like the kind of fight where it only takes a small squad to wipe the other group and frankly, being on a PvE server, leaves me little to no recourse other than to try to run the same griefing. It may not even be intentional for folks who lag. I built my computer over winter break and while it's pretty good, sometimes a big raid or aoe will chug it a little. I agree with Bulletdance's assessment that a heroic boss should be in a heroic raid. Not out where JoeShmoe could get stomped by accident and get shouted down. :/

It's just way too easy to annihilate a coordinated group on this one.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Slickrock »

Egad....

What is going on here?

Some people might not play nice, so let's take away all the toys and the non-heroic raiders can play pokemon?

For crying out loud, it's still just on the PTR and everyone is crying about griefing.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Novikova »

It's more that some people might not play nice, some folks might not know better and get nailed going to get an herb or watching the fight and honestly? If they want a world boss, something like Galleon on a reasonable spawn timer is fine. Oh, and it's just as bad if one poor sap getting a lag spike murderizes your raid. There is no need to return to Naxx 40 'punish someone for not living somewhere with good internet or having an awesome, firebreathing computer' design. None at all.

As it sits, the current design is far too easy to grief (unintentionally or otherwise). You want a heroic boss? Put 'im in a heroic raid. This boss is very much a heroic boss out in the world.

He's like C'thun riding on the back of Galleon while the Sha holds up a boombox. There's not much chance of a non-heroic raid group getting this guy down, period. Easily griefed is just sprinkles on the pain cupcake.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Slickrock »

Novikova wrote:You want a heroic boss? Put 'im in a heroic raid. This boss is very much a heroic boss out in the world.
I really really really don't understand this. You want to remove any danger or drama from the PVE world? Why not play a RPG then, where other players can't intefere with you?

The option really has to be considered that Blizz intentionally wants there to be the option of cross faction shenanigans. But to neuter the fight, or remove it entirely just because someone MIGHT do something on occasion is just silly. He's not an average boss sitting in the middle of Kun-Lai, he's out of the way, you have to fight through elites to get to him, and last I checked, there weren't any herb nodes or mining nodes close.

I love the idea of a nasty tough world boss, and I really don't see why everyone is so upset about a boss that's out of the way, and won't impact the "safe" world that some want to live in. It's like asking to remove BGs because you don't like PVP.
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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Castile »

Slickrock wrote:
Novikova wrote:You want a heroic boss? Put 'im in a heroic raid. This boss is very much a heroic boss out in the world.
I really really really don't understand this. You want to remove any danger or drama from the PVE world? Why not play a RPG then, where other players can't intefere with you?

The option really has to be considered that Blizz intentionally wants there to be the option of cross faction shenanigans. But to neuter the fight, or remove it entirely just because someone MIGHT do something on occasion is just silly. He's not an average boss sitting in the middle of Kun-Lai, he's out of the way, you have to fight through elites to get to him, and last I checked, there weren't any herb nodes or mining nodes close.

I love the idea of a nasty tough world boss, and I really don't see why everyone is so upset about a boss that's out of the way, and won't impact the "safe" world that some want to live in. It's like asking to remove BGs because you don't like PVP.
See I do understand.

From what I'm reading this sounds like a proper raid boss. Raid = PVE. And if this boss is intended for PVE'ers they quite frankly dont want cross faction shenaigans. They want to kill the boss with minimal derps as possible. They want loot and not waste time on needless wipes.

If this boss is meant for anyone and everybody then no it shouldn't be a heroic raid boss lvl or standard. It should cater to the open world and where one derp doesnt = epic fail. It should allow for errors and the occastional jerk from the other faction trying to wipe. Like the current Sha does on PVP realms. Sure the other faction will try to grief but the ease of the fight and spawn timer allows for this with minimal hair pullage.

Take it from me, a raider on a PVP realm (note not by choice lol) there is nothing more irratating to a PVE'er then cross faction shanaigans when trying to get the job done. If that job is 10x harder than normal then simply ppl won't bother and the boss will sit there like a useless loot pinyata. My 2 cents.

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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by SpiritBinder »

Novikova wrote:He's like C'thun riding on the back of Galleon while the Sha holds up a boombox. There's not much chance of a non-heroic raid group getting this guy down, period. Easily griefed is just sprinkles on the pain cupcake.
I like them odds.... ;)

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Re: Difficult bosses that faction tap (design conflict?)

Unread post by Castile »

Spiritbinder wrote:
Novikova wrote:He's like C'thun riding on the back of Galleon while the Sha holds up a boombox. There's not much chance of a non-heroic raid group getting this guy down, period. Easily griefed is just sprinkles on the pain cupcake.
I like them odds.... ;)

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