IDEA - Central layout, no boss order Operation

[paowee]

Down what you can down first.

 

• No set order for bosses.
  
• Small map like EC or huge like S&V.
  
• Guilds will experiment on what order they want to do the encounters.
  
• Center of the map could be a bonus boss that you need to activate (like Dreadful Entity) or area where the last boss will spawn after all the bosses are downed.
  
• Trash pulls along the pathways.
  
• Can be the first level of an Operation, with a patch adding a basement for the second level Operation.
  
• First level Operation: An underground facility? A hidden cave hide-out? Inside Prototype-ship Voidstar?
  
• Second level Operation: Derelict underground facility. Hi-tech secret facility. Platforms you can fall off

 

Layout: http://i.imgur.com/dTTOXSd.jpg

Edited June 23, 2013 by paowee

[GeckoOBac]

Cool Idea but I think it could be done even better...

 

Basically the whole operation is a puzzle, you don't get to kill *all* the bosses each week, but only some of them, with loot spread out among all the bosses so you can't just farm always the same ones.

 

The bosses you kill grant/remove abilities/mechanics from the end boss, making the final boss fight unique for every combination of boss kills.

 

[edit: possibly use the same mechanic for the small bosses too, slightly changing the fight mechanics depending on the order of kill, with slightly different bonuses/loot depending on order, so as to avoid focusing on just ONE order]

Edited June 23, 2013 by GeckoOBac

[paowee]

Cool Idea but I think it could be done even better...

 

Basically the whole operation is a puzzle, you don't get to kill *all* the bosses each week, but only some of them, with loot spread out among all the bosses so you can't just farm always the same ones.

 

The bosses you kill grant/remove abilities/mechanics from the end boss, making the final boss fight unique for every combination of boss kills.

 

[edit: possibly use the same mechanic for the small bosses too, slightly changing the fight mechanics depending on the order of kill, with slightly different bonuses/loot depending on order, so as to avoid focusing on just ONE order]

 

 

Lol yeah. Random token drops but don't drop the same ones in one lockout.

Edited June 23, 2013 by paowee

[Elear]

Idea of "no linear progression" doesn't agree with current lockout system and group finder matching, so that alone makes such ops rather unlikely.

[paowee]

Idea of "no linear progression" doesn't agree with current lockout system and group finder matching, so that alone makes such ops rather unlikely.

 

........

[GeckoOBac]

Idea of "no linear progression" doesn't agree with current lockout system and group finder matching, so that alone makes such ops rather unlikely.

 

Not necessarily, though it would require a bit of reworking, but if the lockouts are on the number of kills rather than on the specific boss kills, it's not a huge problem.

[Kynesis]

I can't find it now, but a while back Ghostcrawler discussed at length the various pros and cons of 'hub-based' raids... all I remember of it now was that their experience of it as developers and player feedback during and well after those raids was generally quite positive... it wasn't all good though, it'd be well worth finding to learn from their experience.

 

I think some of the wisdom that came of it was that once players 'figured out' the various difficulties of the bosses, there became a defacto order, just as you get in 'council fights' where technically you can take down the bosses in any order, but generally people find that a certain order works better than others.

 

Ulduar is the raid most famous for this approach, as players completed each encounter it allowed them to get help from the defeated bosses in the final encounter with

 

Operations (and raids) are generally structured in a linear fashion so that progression is clear and ostensibly, to increase the difficulty/complexity of later encounters - but if you think about it, progression is measured by the number of encounters completed and a great many guilds get stuck on a particular boss, not because the encounter is amazingly difficult, but because something about their group doesn't gel - and so they miss out on even attempting other bosses.

Getting players to see more content without dumbing it down seems like a worthy goal. I'll quote GC here too, in saying that as players progress their characters, 'encounters effectively nerf themselves' - so those guilds which had been stuck might then go back to those problem bosses with bigger boots.

 

An obvious 'con' is that guilds might just skip everything and only do the last boss, which arguably should be their prerogative (just as a great many players would skip right through all the content of flashpoints to get to the last boss and their phat lewt).

Incentivising each boss fight with gear isn't the only way to encourage players to do all the boss fights, as noted above with Yogg Saron, there are other ways (hopefully more engaging ways) to get people excited about doing all the fights.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Kynesis

[Kitru]

Ulduar is the raid most famous for this approach

 

I actually thought Naxxramas was pretty famous and followed a better design: it had a central hub with 4 separate wings with their own theme that each had 3 bosses (one had 4) that you had to defeat in order. When all 4 of the wings were conquered, you the teleported above the hub unlocked and you moved on to fight the last 2 bosses of the instance.

 

Even if you just cap it off at 6 bosses for the entire thing (15 bosses is a *lot* for a single raid, especially when none of them are optional), so that you just have 4 bosses that you can tackle in any order based upon preference (with a couple/few trash packs from the hub to said boss), it allows groups to tackle what they want and still have a progression model since there are still an explicit penultimate and ultimate boss fight. It prevents anyone from At worst, if you get stuck on one boss, you can still wipe out the other 3 in whatever order you choose. Conversely, if it were the only content for that tier, you could bump it up to 2 bosses per wing and get all 10 bosses you'd want for a tier in that one instance and it's actually better (since, unless you get stuck on the first boss of a wing, you've got 7 bosses to punch through even if you get stuck on one).

 

The biggest problem would really be the lockout system though, as others have said. WoW handled it by just having anyone that had the other bosses killed cause them to not spawn (you could possibly do this by having the bosses spawn upon a condition, like wiping out their trash or clicking a button, rather than start out in the instance, so that the check is made inside the instance not at the time of instantiation), though I'm not sure whether TOR's lockout system can manage it.

 

The problem with creating a "bunch of bosses that you only have access to a few each week based on RNG" is that it's a lot of design and testing for a comparatively small amount of accessible content. Some people are going to go months without seeing a specific boss thanks to RNG. Most bosses, unless they're designed very simply (which is just boring), require much the same amount of development effort: the more complex they get, the more effort is required by it's pretty standard. With a limited number of choices from a random allotment, limiting which ones players have access to randomly wouldn't really be good return on developmental investment.

 

You also run into the problem of certain bosses being dubbed the "easy ones" or "hard ones", and people moving to avoid them (or getting stuck because of random RNG). Whether you go with resettable randomness (resetting the instance chooses new random bosses) or random selection each week (such that the choices are set at server reset rather than instantiation), you're going to have problems either way.

 

It's honestly better, in my opinion, to just provide all bosses at once with the player option to tackle them in whichever order they choose, with an explicit final boss or final boss construct at the end.

[paowee]

It's honestly better, in my opinion, to just provide all bosses at once with the player option to tackle them in whichever order they choose, with an explicit final boss or final boss construct at the end.

 

This is what i'm thinking as welll.

 

I never set foot in Ulduar and i think the hardest raid I did in that time was... the first boss of Tempest Keep loll. Didn't know this was similar to a fight in WoW. Good to know..

[Kitru]

Didn't know this was similar to a fight in WoW. Good to know..

 

There are a few non-linear raids in WoW. AQ20 (now 10) let you choose one of two routes to get to the final boss and, if you chose, you could grab the other 2 bosses for extra loot. Molten Core was even a bit non-linear because 2 of the bosses were in a wing of their own. Naxxramas, which is the design I mentioned before that was the *most* non-linear, was actually the final raid added in vanilla. The only other raids (from my memory) that were appreciably non-linear were Ulduar, also mentioned before, and Blackwing Descent (2 bosses that could be fought in any order to get you down to the next level where there were 3 bosses you could fight in any order, with a final boss you could fight when all other bosses were dead).

 

The hub and spoke raid design and its derivatives/variations aren't really *common*, but they've always been my favorites because it makes it a *lot* harder for groups to get stuck on "that one boss" and even allows different groups to get stuck on different bosses while still getting the same or similar number of kills each week.

[GeckoOBac]

"bunch of bosses that you only have access to a few each week based on RNG"

 

I was thinking more of a set number of bosses but you CHOOSE which to kill, without being able to kill them all though (say, 8 bosses + final, but you only get to kill 5 of the starting bosses each week, your choice of which).

 

I guess lockout may be a problem on the groupfinder, it shouldn't be a problem on normal groups though, just use the lockout of the first one to enter (or group leader) and tie it to number of kills rather than specific kills.

 

Let's say, the gray secant wants more advanced combat specimens and sets up an elaborate gauntlet with single fights: you get to rooms where you can summon the boss tied to that location. After the boss is defeated, a scorekeeper of sort will mark what you kill and how many you have killed, changing the final fight (or possibly the subsequent "pre" bosses too) depending on what you killed.

 

After the threshold of kills is reached, the scorekeeper locks you from summoning more bosses and presents you with Xeno Analyst mk3 and its fight.

 

Doing this with the GF may be tricky (definitely trickier than now), but if you can bind the lockout to a number of prebosses rather than specific kills, then the matching part is done, just match people who have the same or lower amount of kills. And for the specific of the last, "custom" boss, I'd say the easiest thing is probably tying the instance to the GF chosen group leader.

Edited June 24, 2013 by GeckoOBac

[Kitru]

I guess lockout may be a problem on the groupfinder, it shouldn't be a problem on normal groups though, just use the lockout of the first one to enter (or group leader) and tie it to number of kills rather than specific kills.

 

I actually think that the easiest solution might be to steal a pseudo-lockout mechanic from another raid entity in game: the Nightmare Pilgrim. Create a construct where you have the full range of bosses that you can choose from (I definitely like the Grey Secant idea). Each room contains a different boss that, when you defeat it, applies a stack of a lockout debuff that lasts for 5 days, ticking down even when logged out (either specific to the boss/room itself or generic; the first would prevent anyone from repeating the same boss but would create a *lot* of debuffs on the players; unless it could be hidden unless you're in a specific area, like inside the operation instance or just outside of it, it wouldn't be that great because it would clutter the debuff bar). While no one in the ops has fewer than 5 (or however many prereq bosses is desired), you can keep doing the rooms. As soon as someone with 5 stacks (or 5 different boss lockout "stacks") is inside the instance, however, the rooms turn off (or can no longer be entered), and the final boss is spawned. Defeating the final boss removes all of the other debuff stacks and replaces it with a new one (that, if possible, is removed upon server reset every week; the same could be applied to the other boss kill debuffs, once again, if possible).

 

This would take care of the lockout problem while being comparatively simple to implement as well as making it simple to see who is locked out to whatever whenever you're putting a group together. It still creates a problem where some content just wouldn't be done by groups: people would just identify the easiest boss and repeat it the required number of times or identify the 5 easiest bosses and chain run those. It could be solved by varying the drops somewhat (i.e. the "easy" bosses give non-set drops whereas the "hard" bosses drop the set drops) or "fixing" it such that repeating a boss/room makes it drop non-set rather than set gear.

[Elear]

While no one in the ops has fewer than 5 (or however many prereq bosses is desired), you can keep doing the rooms. As soon as someone with 5 stacks (or 5 different boss lockout "stacks") is inside the instance, however, the rooms turn off (or can no longer be entered), and the final boss is spawned.

That is rather bad solution, assuming not everyone in group finder has mindset "skip everything and head for last boss". By using entirely new way to handle lockout, it won't be included in current lockout GUI, so people geting pop won't be able to tell which boss they will be allowed to kill and which not..

Worst case scenario, they just disable in GF queueing for such ops with partial lockout. Or work on better solution.

[Kitru]

That is rather bad solution, assuming not everyone in group finder

 

I wouldn't put it in group finder. Not every raid has to be.

[GeckoOBac]

I wouldn't put it in group finder. Not every raid has to be.

 

And with this I agree, though I have to say I don't particularly like the debuff solution either (but it does seem the easier way to approach this).

 

Mostly because I really like the idea of having an op with varying content (up to a point), and the easiest way to do that is having just a single boss change mechanics, and have the changing mechanics tied to the preliminary boss kills. It could be either the order or the combination.

 

Both have pros and cons: tying to the order of kill simplifies stuff, but forces you to a specific order if you want specific stuff and doesn't really allow variation in difficulty (unless you change ALL bosses, which would be a major amount of work) because regardless of order, you'd still be killing the same bosses.

The "selection" of bosses allows you more variation and it allows you to tie more important final boss drops to harder mechanics both on the final boss AND on the preliminary boss needed to unlock them. It does also mean that you have bosses that can't be killed every week and an overall higher amount of bosses in development, for the same weekly raid time (though it will end up with a higher longevity of the content).

 

Personally I *really* like the latter option or variations thereof (say, a tiered system where you get 8 underbosses, 4 bosses and 1/2 final bosses that vary their mechanics and loot based on the tiered kills). It does pose problems, but if the GF can be skipped then the biggest one is avoided. Rest is development cost, but it could be an op where you can gather ALL the gear of a tier, so the cost would probably be justified.

[Mistress_Ivi]

Rift did this when they added the island (before the expansion) you had to kill 5 bosses (7 in hardmode if I recall) ... you could kill ANY of the first 4 you wanted in any order, then the 5th unlocked.

 

I was hoping S&V with their boss-centric set up might have been like this, sadly not. Still, plenty of time for them to add something like this/that!

[obliminator]

I'm still not entirely sure about the point of the lockout system or how it works besides keeping people from repeating the same op in a given week, so these might be terrible ideas, but I figure it's worth throwing out there.

 

1. Group finder starts from the beginning, right? So have an "intro" boss you have to kill before you can branch out to pick each of them, then continue as mentioned previously. There would obviously be flaws here, but it would make some parts easier.

 

2. This might be a bit harder to manage, but have "tokens" each choice-boss drops (maybe 2 drop per boss) that are unique and don't stack, but each boss drops a different one. So you can therefore choose which bosses to kill, and the first two people to loot any given boss (who don't already have a token) get that boss' token.

Then, come the preparation for the final boss fight, tokens are "traded in" for boss mechanics (2 identical tokens - 4 in 16-man - removes the corresponding mechanic) and whoever had the token gets it replaced with a "depleted" version that just prevents them from picking up another token until the server resets. (There would also be a normal lockout on the first and last bosses, and a "hub" lockout once any four were killed, that's just one lockout from all the bosses)

That way, also, elite groups looking for an unnecessary challenge could try skipping to the final boss and dealing with all the extra mechanics, or skipping part of the hub, or not trading their tokens all in if that's an option. (Maybe the final boss would automatically grant a hub lockout too, or maybe they could go back afterwards and kill the hub bosses for the comms/loot, I dunno.)

 

Just a thought. (And not the most original one, but if it works why not)

 

Come to think of it, you could have a "token-lockout" too for the second version, instead of the depleted token. But I don't know how that would work out.

[Mistress_Ivi]

I'm still not entirely sure about the point of the lockout system or how it works besides keeping people from repeating the same op in a given week, so these might be terrible ideas, but I figure it's worth throwing out there.

 

1. Group finder starts from the beginning, right? So have an "intro" boss you have to kill before you can branch out to pick each of them, then continue as mentioned previously. There would obviously be flaws here, but it would make some parts easier.

 

2. This might be a bit harder to manage, but have "tokens" each choice-boss drops (maybe 2 drop per boss) that are unique and don't stack, but each boss drops a different one. So you can therefore choose which bosses to kill, and the first two people to loot any given boss (who don't already have a token) get that boss' token.

Then, come the preparation for the final boss fight, tokens are "traded in" for boss mechanics (2 identical tokens - 4 in 16-man - removes the corresponding mechanic) and whoever had the token gets it replaced with a "depleted" version that just prevents them from picking up another token until the server resets. (There would also be a normal lockout on the first and last bosses, and a "hub" lockout once any four were killed, that's just one lockout from all the bosses)

That way, also, elite groups looking for an unnecessary challenge could try skipping to the final boss and dealing with all the extra mechanics, or skipping part of the hub, or not trading their tokens all in if that's an option. (Maybe the final boss would automatically grant a hub lockout too, or maybe they could go back afterwards and kill the hub bosses for the comms/loot, I dunno.)

 

Just a thought. (And not the most original one, but if it works why not)

 

Come to think of it, you could have a "token-lockout" too for the second version, instead of the depleted token. But I don't know how that would work out.

 

If you kill a boss, it'll save your progress... it isn't hard to code an NPC to not appear if your mission log says you've killed it. Only issue we have is with "trash" mobs not getting the memo.