Faster operations release schedule with single bosses that can be tied together later

[Cant_hear_chat]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested at some point but I could only find 1 similar thread with the searches I used (see link towards the end). I'm not sure if this will actually improve things from a design perspective but figure it is worth suggesting. I also want to acknowledge that there is a good chance the team has thought of this but, again, no harm in suggesting it, especially if it was rejected because the players might not go for it.

 

The short version is that the delay inherent in creating a full operation with a large sprawling map, lots of trash mobs, 5 bosses with unique mechanics and environments could be decreased by creating bosses similar to Toborro's courtyard and Colossal monolith and releasing these more regularly. These could be separate to the story but tied together with a theme (eg zakuul - zildrog or other swamp monsters, giant guardian droids, even mentor style military facilities). These could be put into a new group finder queue for all single bosses or, once a few have been released, they could then be tied into a single campaign or tour with teleports to the next boss after each boss.

 

Single bosses have issues currently:

1. A bit of a pain to get to, particularly TC.

2. They take longer to get a group together than they do to actually do the boss.

3. They drop 1 token per 8 players.

4. A single quick boss is anticlimactic after all the effort of putting a group together. You could run both of them together but see point 1.

5. Individual bosses on separate planets need a separate environment designed for each, not really saving time on designing the artwork.

This leads to possibly spending an hour of time if you join the group shortly after it starts, just to have a 1 in 8 chance of a drop and for about 10 min of play if you one shot it. This is slightly improved if you do the HM version as well but its still not brilliant.

 

Stringing together multiple bosses into a campaign (eg a zakuul campaign for the examples I mentioned before) allows for:

1. Using teleports or group finder to get people quickly to each. This also cuts down on the clearing trash stages and allows progression groups doing the harder levels to concentrate on clearing the bosses.

2. Groups wanting a full raid can run a full set of 5 bosses. It can then be put into the regular rotation for group finder.

3. The loot should be similar to any current raid (except SNV as it has more bosses). They can be random drops still or follow a set drop table if part of the campaign.

4. The operation should take longer than putting together the group.

5. Using a unifying theme or planet for the operation, or using resources already designed for the chapter content if the bosses are done as side quests to the story chapters cuts down on having to design a full set of art resources for each boss. It should be a similar amount of design work to a full operation but just done and released room by room. Avoiding creating a brand new planet like darvannis, asation, etc could make it easier.

 

These bosses could be included as side quests to the story like the ravagers with cutscenes OUTSIDE of the boss instance giving story and avoiding complaints of skipping cutscenes like what happens in flashpoints. Putting them in group finder would allow them to be done by any character, even if they haven't done any KOTFE chapters if it is linked into that story.

 

A proposal for individual bosses was previously suggested here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=867952

However, this post suggested putting the bosses into the story (all the posts about the dread operations and solo players wanting to see the story show why this would be bad) and compensating for lack of gameplay with more grand design. This would result in little decreased effort but much shorter gameplay (or much more involved and difficult gameplay to draw the encounter out).

 

I think this would still appeal to regular raiders as it gives more regular raiding content with eventually a full operation with multiple bosses but also appeals to more casual raiders who could practice individual bosses or get together groups that would bypass the group finder campaign and skip pug killer bosses if they aren't up to it yet.

Edited June 18, 2016 by Cant_hear_chat

[Cant_hear_chat]

Also, on a related sidenote, can I suggest putting a quick travel on TC and HoR weeklies similar to the heroic weeklies?

[Muljo_Stpho]

I may have thrown out a few thoughts on this as well in some topic out there, just as a random thought on a tangent from whatever the topic had actually been about. Just wondering if a long series of individual self-contained op bosses similar to TC / Xeno / Eyeless instead of full ops would be something that the devs would consider or something that the "progression raider" types would care about. (Or if the raiders would just whine at the lack of proper 5-7 boss long instances being added.)

 

Realistically, in terms of development and production, it's a difference between spending a couple months (or however long it takes) per encounter for a total of a year overall designing and creating and testing one big bundle of content to release all at once versus spending a couple months (or however long it takes) designing and creating and testing one small package of fresh content to push out to the public and then repeating the process over and over all throughout the year. In the long term it's the same number of encounters created in roughly the same amount of time. It's just a question of when they all see release dates.

 

Once enough encounters exist for it, I could imagine a group finder queue for these bite sized operation encounters rotating on a schedule similar to the operation queue, except maybe have multiple options available at a time.... Okay, so let's say we have a list of encounters A through J (10 separate fights). Let's say that we look at group finder and see that A will be available for the next 8 hours, D will be available for the next 16 hours, and G will be available for the next 24 hours. (All three lines are on 24 hour timers. They're just offset to be spaced 8 hours apart from each other. 24 hours later we'd look at group finder and see that B will be up for the next 8 hours, E for the next 16 hours, and H for the next 24 hours. Another 24 hours later and it's C for the next 8, F for the next 16 and I for the next 24. After that we're looking at D, G, and J in the queue. And so on.

 

And of course just like the operation queue doesn't show up if you're locked out for the operation that's currently running, any line of the encounter queue that you're already locked out for just won't show up for you.

 

They could also tweak it to have fewer lines or more lines depending on exactly how many encounters have been created and how much they want to let the selections repeat throughout each week. Maybe they might want to arrange those options A through J on two lines spaced 12 hours apart and have encounters A and F showing on the first day. Then it's B and G, then C and H, then D and I, then E and J, and then it's not until day 6 that we see overlap as F and A are what should be on the queue that day. Or four lines could have timing spaced 6 hours apart and they might start day one with encounters A, C, E, and G available.

 

I'd also suggest that perhaps the scheduling ought to allow for Eyeless to be in the queue at least a couple times during every Rakghoul event week and for Xeno to be in the queue at least a couple times during every Gree event week.

 

For the part about building up stories around these individual bosses in a context outside of the operation instances, I could actually imagine that taking a sort of Shadow of Revan ending inspired approach. As in... You'd have a solo story instance getting caught up on the current tactical situation after your last victory and you would have an option each time to either take on the next fight with an operations group or by going out on a mission to handle the fight more carefully on your own. You don't need to take the operation step to go on the operation of course. Just pick up the weekly for it from the encounters mission terminal and find a group in group finder or in chat. But the solo route would involve some running around mission steps before finally ending up at an alternate version of the encounter where some mechanics are simplified and you have a bunch of NPC backup in the fight (maybe keep some semblance of the same mechanics being intact by having the NPCs do the correct things automatically and say what they're doing, which could serve as a bit of a tutorial for newer players), and the operation route bypasses that runaround with the tradeoff of course being that the group needs to coordinate to manage the fight mechanics since there are no NPCs there to do it for them.

 

Maybe that would be getting a bit ambitious though. The intermediary stuff for the solo route would probably need a ton of new dailies to piggyback off of. Like if the theme for the first year of bosses was that they're all targets on Zakuul, Zakuul would need all these separate pockets of dailies missions added to every nook and cranny across the planet, with each set of dailies devoted to tasks intended to help take down a particular foe. (Most likely adding several new regions to the current map.)

[Cant_hear_chat]

I like the idea of a rotating schedule but it would need to have enough encounters to not repeat during the week as they second time it appears there may not be so many people available to do it. On the other hand, it may encourage people to gear up alts and try different roles. Having the event bosses in GF is also a nice touch.

 

The temple of sacrifice style operations route or solo route in the story would be interesting but would possibly defeat the purpose of making production faster. As you say, it would require more dailies to give the solo players something to do. Solo versions of the bosses also seem too painful to script for NPCs. They'd have to be really cut down versions of the boss and probably wouldn't be too fun to repeat. I figure doing the Ravager style side mission should be simple. Alliance alerts or NPCs in quest areas could give missions to help the cause eg Civilians asking for help with a local monster/crime boss/gang etc or resistance members suggesting high value targets.

 

The raiders may have an issue with only 1 boss at a time but, as you pointed out, it's that or wait much longer for a full op. If the bosses are put together into a full op/campaign with shuttles appearing after each boss to quick travel players to the next boss then they would have a full op and around the same time as it would have taken for a full op anyway. They'd just have individual bosses to play with in the waiting period. Also, make the HM (even NiM mode depending on how much time that would take) sufficiently challenging and each one could keep them occupied for a while.

 

If the campaign lockout was kept separate from the individual bosses, it means that players can do all the individual bosses at any time and still be able to do the full operation when it comes up in the rotation. It would allow guilds to do a quick run if they can't get everyone together long enough for a full operation (this seems to be a big issue now) or as a warmup while waiting for everyone to arrive for a scheduled progression run.

 

With the raider community dwindling and many non-raiders hesitant to join a long operation run, having a range of individual bosses available for short groups might get more people into raiding. It seems to work quite well in events as many people who don't usually raid join groups because they are in the area when the call goes out. If the individual bosses are easy to get to through group finder or heroic style priority travel then they might be a great way to get non-raiders who either don't have time or are daunted by a full operation to join in.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Cant_hear_chat