Hard mode encounter designs
The hard mode designs that we've seen so far from Blizzard, taking a broad definition of "hard mode" and going back to Classic, fall into a few categories:
From there on it gets less exciting, or boring. If I have to kill a boss with the wrong tools or the wrong help I'm wondering why bother. Activating the hard mode directly, or by means of kill order, also feels kind of contrived and unexciting. It feels as if we're deliberately using the wrong strategy to beat the encounter!
The type of hard mode that I really dislike are the control-based ones, such as undying/immortal, having to kill the boss a particular way, or having to avoid or counter a particular mechanic. Although these give some indication that you have, well, control, they are completely failure-focused and based on arbitrary constraints. The thought of deliberately trying to get those achievements feels utterly unexciting.
- Timed run: Clear part of the instance very fast and kill a boss before the opportunity to get a reward vanishes: Strat45, Shattered Halls, ZA bear, CoS drake, Arachnophobia, Thorim.
- Brute force: Kill a boss while adds are up, ignoring some timed mechanics, or otherwise overwhelming the encounter: Faerlina and KT, Sarth 3D zerg, XT, AN bosses 1 & 2, DTK dinosaur boss.
- Speed kill: Just kill the boss very fast, but without any major difference in the encounter: Patchwerk, Malygos, Razorscale, Hodir, AN last boss.
- Refusing help: Defeating a boss without using some help that's on offer, or using less of it, or the wrong kind: Yogg-saron hard mode, Occulus achievements.
- Asking for it: Deliberately asking for the encounter to be harder by talking to an NPC or pressing the big red button: Leviathan, Mimiron.
- Kill order: Instead of killing the mobs one by one to weaken the encounter, take them on in the wrong order or at once: Sarth 3D, Freya, council.
- Control: Avoid dying, kill bosses together, avoid an encounter mechanic, or don't attack a particular enemy. Undying/immortal, four horsemen, Safety dance, flame walls, DTK rhino boss, UK first boss.
From there on it gets less exciting, or boring. If I have to kill a boss with the wrong tools or the wrong help I'm wondering why bother. Activating the hard mode directly, or by means of kill order, also feels kind of contrived and unexciting. It feels as if we're deliberately using the wrong strategy to beat the encounter!
The type of hard mode that I really dislike are the control-based ones, such as undying/immortal, having to kill the boss a particular way, or having to avoid or counter a particular mechanic. Although these give some indication that you have, well, control, they are completely failure-focused and based on arbitrary constraints. The thought of deliberately trying to get those achievements feels utterly unexciting.
Total Comments 4
Comments
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I would separate category 7., Control, into two different categories: "Control" and "Luck". The four horsemen achievement does not bother me so much - it requires planning and skill to get it, but not so much luck. By contrast, the undying achievement requires luck: badly timed lag, graphic glitches, or other such objective hazards can kill a competent group's chances. As a person who cleared four wings of Naxx without a single death and then lost the achievement to a few seconds of lag as one party member ran to get behind an ice block on Sapphiron... yeah, I hate those Luck achievements.Posted 06-17-2009 at 09:51 AM by Myranmys
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For me it's a bit of the other way around: the speed kills come with gear and doing an encounter often enough, it's just natural that you do it faster and faster. Not really exciting.
Really, the category 7(control) is what I like, it's like a new fight with new mechanics.
The 7(luck) ones however. Well the anoying part was that a second of lag would mean you'd have to try a week later.Posted 06-17-2009 at 05:17 PM by orcstar -
I personally despise all but the first and third, and consider heartbreaker to be a part of the first, not the second.
I see no point to making a fight harder by trying to do it wrong or by skipping something, when instead you should be making it harder by trying to do it right.
ZA 4 timed was brilliant because it required you to do it right, not smash your head against a hard boss repeatedly until you learned how to avoid the added hurdles by not killing xyz add.
Consider "Arachnophobia" for a low DPS guild, in contrast to Momma said knock you out. Faerlina's Frenzy is a 50% miss debuff - you can literally just ignore the adds and hope the RNG treats you well, whereas arachnophobia requires you to be somewhat efficient and have good execution.
Conspeedatory is another example of something that would have been a better hard mode than the actual hard mode. (knock on wood... pun intended.) Freya trash takes forever to clear, killing trash + elders + freya in the time limit is a hard mode in and of itself.
It simply bothers me that contrivance is the name of the game here, not difficulty.
Posted 06-17-2009 at 05:54 PM by Alent - You have a point about brute force being another case of doing it wrong.
Here's how I would approach hard modes if I was designing them:
- Black dragon in humanoid form sits in his eyrie, and gets visited by a dragon of each of the other flights every few minutes. If you attack him alone, he turns into a dragon shortly and you have an easy fight. If you attack when the visitor is present the black avatar dies easily and you fight the visitor, who is harder. That way you pick one dragon of your choice each week.
- The evil king sits at this throne in his keep. As you enter, his trusted general is present, with several guards. You have to eat through the guards to get to them. If you're good, you fight the general and the king. If you're slow, the king mounts up and leaves.
- You're descending into the halls of mechanical giants to rescue some stupid dwarf. You burst into a set piece where the evil mastermind (a gnome) has the dwarf suspended over a pool of crocolisks. You have to kill the gnome in two minutes to save the dwarf.
And so on, insert your theme here. To get the hard mode you have to do everything right, as you say, and the easy mode is clearly a lesser, only partially successful, kill. Blizzard clearly wanted to avoid that, but I think it's cool.
I'm a competent but not hardcore raider and in all likelihood our group will only do a few Ulduar hard modes before something new comes along. I'd be quite happy if Sif and Thorim were reversed, like the example above, so we got to kill Sif but Thorim eluded us until we did the hard mode.Posted 06-17-2009 at 07:26 PM by Machus
