The Weekly Marmot - Dragon Soul And Beyond

[Bodasafa]

So I finally watched these last night... and ZOMG THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS ^.

Blew my mind.

I checked these out. The easy games one had good points.

Thinking back on it I wonder how I ever figured out how to play wow some what correctly in end game raiding. I feel like 90% of what I learned about how to play it right was done by third party websites (cough tankspot) outside the game or from my brother who got me started on it.

I remember trying to get a friend into playing wow back when I started. When I tried to explain to him what to do I found myself rambling for 30 minutes because there was so much I felt he needed to know. I think I straight up scared him away from it.

I can't imagine trying to start playing the game today to get to current content, what a huge ass mountain to climb with no directions.

The thing that hooked me was the vast world to explore, so much to see and learn. There was definitely a "mystery" aspect that was compelling to me. I remember doing my warrior class quest and traveling to the horde continent for the first time. It felt like I traveled on foot from LA to New York.

That "mystery" is pretty much gone. Of course its been 6 years so I guess it was going to end. I just feel like were at the point where we need WoW 2. Take the best of what they have learned about the right way to do things/systems/rewards and put all that into a new mystery world for us to explore. Adding a new island or fixing up old content is becoming stale to me. I blow through the new lands, then never have a reason to be in them again because the current raid content (the real reason I play) is in some old recycled area (Cough Dragon Soul).

I would have loved to go through deepholm or vashj to get to my raid content and a good story with it. Not having the raid instance in vashj was a big let down.

[Leucifer]

I think what makes Dragonsoul bad is that the MYSTERY of how to tackle a boss is gone. "Okay, stand here, press this button now, okay kill this, okay handle the adds" With few exceptions it's largely formulaic. The mechanics are not deep. I think the only boss that had deep mechanics (that I did, and this was up to 5/8 HM Pre-nerf with attempts on Gunship) was Yor'sahj.

Anyways, just my 2cp. I'm looking forward to MoP since I think blizzard realizes this.

Nice post Agg. Clipped it out to this one section to target one specific issue.

The mystery of how to tackle a boss.
Fights being largely formulaic.
Mechanics not deep.

How much of this is related to the amount of "scouting" out a raid beforehand that is being done? How often do we really see a guild or raid team go into a new raid "blind"?

I'm not saying that you, personally, have never gone into a raid without some pre-existing knowledge about it. What I'm saying though is that, I'd guess that a significant amount of the raiding population watches videos, reads previews and tactics, and generally "scouts" out a raid encounter before going into it. It's almost like playing Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat against the computer over and over and over and over and over...... ad nasueum. At some point you're going to say "Sh*t... I'm tired of beating up Scorpion for the 100th time just to get to Shao Khan." And at some point, even THAT is going to get tiring.

So...... how does a developer come up with interesting and unique content to overcome this "thing"?

Random phases? Varying fights (like the Stage in Kara)? "Gimmick" fights like "Chess Match"?

[Slyvar]

Nice post Agg. Clipped it out to this one section to target one specific issue.

The mystery of how to tackle a boss.
Fights being largely formulaic.
Mechanics not deep.

How much of this is related to the amount of "scouting" out a raid beforehand that is being done? How often do we really see a guild or raid team go into a new raid "blind"?

I'm not saying that you, personally, have never gone into a raid without some pre-existing knowledge about it. What I'm saying though is that, I'd guess that a significant amount of the raiding population watches videos, reads previews and tactics, and generally "scouts" out a raid encounter before going into it. It's almost like playing Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat against the computer over and over and over and over and over...... ad nasueum. At some point you're going to say "Sh*t... I'm tired of beating up Scorpion for the 100th time just to get to Shao Khan." And at some point, even THAT is going to get tiring.

So...... how does a developer come up with interesting and unique content to overcome this "thing"?

Random phases? Varying fights (like the Stage in Kara)? "Gimmick" fights like "Chess Match"?

The only way to really overcome this would be adding some randomness to bosses:

- The boss fight consists of 2-4 phases, chosen at random from a pool of 20+ possible phases
- The boss has a pool of 50+ abilities, but only uses 10ish in a particular fight

This way you'd have fights that are extremely dynamic and change on the fly. The abilities and phases can even change pull-to-pull. But there's are two pretty big downsides to this. First, designing a single boss would be very hard, not only the initial design but balancing each phase and ability. It would be a massive undertaking. Second, I think this would have a lot of backlash from the community -- Players are accustomed to knowing whats coming and if that were to change I don't think the majority of players would like it.

[Ion]

The only way to really overcome this would be adding some randomness to bosses:

- The boss fight consists of 2-4 phases, chosen at random from a pool of 20+ possible phases
- The boss has a pool of 50+ abilities, but only uses 10ish in a particular fight

This way you'd have fights that are extremely dynamic and change on the fly. The abilities and phases can even change pull-to-pull. But there's are two pretty big downsides to this. First, designing a single boss would be a massive effort, not only the initial design but balancing each phase and ability. It would be a massive undertaking. Second, I think this would have massive backlash from the community -- Players are accustomed to knowing whats coming and if that were to change I don't think the majority of players would like it.

Heroic Yor'sahj had a possibility of (iirc anyway) 15 "phases" of which you get...I dunno 4? 3?

It was an interesting fight the first couple of times...but dynamic doesn't mean deep.

[Fetzie]

This way you'd have fights that are extremely dynamic and change on the fly. The abilities and phases can even change pull-to-pull. But there's are two pretty big downsides to this. First, designing a single boss would be very hard, not only the initial design but balancing each phase and ability. It would be a massive undertaking. Second, I think this would have a lot of backlash from the community -- Players are accustomed to knowing whats coming and if that were to change I don't think the majority of players would like it.

They did something like this with Faction Champions in ToC. The playerbase largely hated the encounter.

[Leucifer]

The only way to really overcome this would be adding some randomness to bosses:

- The boss fight consists of 2-4 phases, chosen at random from a pool of 20+ possible phases
- The boss has a pool of 50+ abilities, but only uses 10ish in a particular fight

This way you'd have fights that are extremely dynamic and change on the fly. The abilities and phases can even change pull-to-pull. But there's are two pretty big downsides to this. First, designing a single boss would be very hard, not only the initial design but balancing each phase and ability. It would be a massive undertaking. Second, I think this would have a lot of backlash from the community -- Players are accustomed to knowing whats coming and if that were to change I don't think the majority of players would like it.

It would have to be some randomness. Too much and you'll just raise hate and discontent. I think you're correct on the downsides. Encounter design would become an increasingly difficult nightmare to manage as you added more variables. That and look at how it is currently.... when something "random" happens in a raid as it is, there's backlash. Look at the previous posts. Something didn't go exactly as it was expected in a fight?...... RAR!!!! (Hagara comes to mind). Yes, some of this was just plain bugginess. Imagine though if Blizzard came out and said, "Oh, we meant for that to happen.... it's random." I can imagine the gouts of flame from the population..... lol

So how do you create depth..... with/without a minimal amount of randomness....?

Oh, and without making it a 15 to 20 minute fight.

[Lore]

Heroic Yor'sahj had a possibility of (iirc anyway) 15 "phases" of which you get...I dunno 4? 3?

It was an interesting fight the first couple of times...but dynamic doesn't mean deep.

That's actually incorrect. Mathematically, it should be 15 possible combinations, but he only ever does 6 of them:

- black blue green purple
- black blue green red
- black blue purple yellow
- black green red yellow
- black purple red yellow
- blue green purple yellow

He "should" be able to do, for example, "blue green purple red" or "black green purple red"... but he never will. That's a huge part of why the fight isn't nearly as deep as people think it is.

[Kagitaar]

@Lore

While true that he could do those combos, people would just kill red in the first or green in the second and the combo would end up exactly the same so yeah.

[Lore]

That's pretty much my point - the fight was way shallower than most people assume

[feralminded]

Ultimately the closest you get to "random" encounters are fights like heroic Omnitron Defense System and Yor'sahj. Before nerfs and out-gearing both fights we're reasonably difficult but eventually humans can find patterns in anything. That said there are tons of issues with fights that wind up TOO random in that the difficulty level can swing dramatically between pulls based on RNG. Even Yor'sahj which only had 6 combinations could be dramatically more or less difficult depending on what combinations you saw and in what order (meaning were key CD's like bubble or spirit link back up yet). Our pre-nerf kills of H-Yor'sahj were fairly reliant on some favorable RNG and this isn't necessarily as fun as it sounds.

[Ion]

That's actually incorrect. Mathematically, it should be 15 possible combinations, but he only ever does 6 of them:

- black blue green purple
- black blue green red
- black blue purple yellow
- black green red yellow
- black purple red yellow
- blue green purple yellow

He "should" be able to do, for example, "blue green purple red" or "black green purple red"... but he never will. That's a huge part of why the fight isn't nearly as deep as people think it is.

We documented our first few kills and got these combinations:

Black Red Purple Yellow
Black Red Yellow Green
Black Red Green Yellow
Black Blue Purple Yellow
Black Blue Red Green
Blue Green Purple Black
Blue Green Purple Yellow

One of the combinations you listed isn't in that list (black blue green purple), so that's at least 8 possible of the 15.

Now it might not be all 15 that are possible, either...but it's not just 6, clearly.

Edit: I saw one more in the last log I have of it (it's almost expired...I haven't been uploading them recently):
Black Blue Red Yellow

So at least 9.

[Aggathon]

It's my understanding that black always spawns is the deal, so the combination "Blue Green Purple Yellow" shouldn't happen.

[Aggathon]

It's my understanding that black always spawns is the deal, so the combination "Blue Green Purple Yellow" shouldn't happen.

Ion informs me that I am wrong, I retract this statement.

[Slyvar]

They did something like this with Faction Champions in ToC. The playerbase largely hated the encounter.

I think randomness is something that I personally would enjoy. But the majority of WoW players seem to hate it in raid situations. :P The ultimate depth for raids would be to have a Blizzard employee controlling the bosses! :P

[iholycow]

Lore, According to most of the top top guilds. The first four bosses were praised the highest. The major problem guilds had with them was just tuning.

You saw Dragon soul was easy, but try this.

Do heroic morchok no nerfs with <= 6 healers. As a first boss this fight was actually decently tough to heal with real amount of healers. Most guilds went and 8 healed it or on 10 man 4. If the enrage timer had been a little more strict this fight could have been rather difficult.

Heroic Yorsahj pre any nerfs was extremely difficult and praised by top guilds. The fight required lots of min maxing and on the fly strategy based of the black and yellow oozes in order to beat the enrage timer.

Warlord was unique in that dps had to min max between killing adds and the boss. A lot of guilds left a rogue or two on the boss in order to help beat the enrage timer. Though all in all not a particularly interesting boss.

Hagara was very close to being one of the best bosses in the entire instance. The transition phases needed to last longer and time spent on boss should have been a little longer. With less amount of times doing the phases. You say you can't remember the differences between normal and heroic yet honestly this boss has quite a few. The debuff in frost phase, lightning ticking for 20k per person instead of 2k, moving while doing her berserk, and the enrage timer. All of these drastically changed the fight.

Ultraxion was according to top guilds an easier dps check then baleroc was even with out the ability to kite. Honestly as a healer this fight sucks and should die. Waiting on 25 "heroic" raiders to figure out how to push a button was boring and tedious. As someone else stated the "DPS check" boss isn't the time to learn how to play your class. That is reserved for every boss otherwise you are not raiding at a hardcore level.

Warmaster, oh warmaster. Could have easily been the best non end boss this expac. Boss felt unfinished and probably was. Phase 2 felt unfinished, and the fire was clearly buggy and needed some more work.

Spine... A fight that involved class stacking being bored and a horrible cut scene. Honestly though probably the single best fight as a tank. Lots of movement and actually doing something.

Madness sucks enough said. Terrible terrible fight. A major let down.

I think this tier was rushed out and given to the b team while the A team worked on tier 14. We will see the same thing in mop that we did in cata. An awesome first tier with each consecutive tier being worse and worse.Tier 14 is not the rise of lots of bosses in raids we will see the same excuse for next tiers that we saw with these past tiers. It all comes down to selling mop. Create a great initial impression then slowly stop putting so much money into it and start working on the next expac.

Other problems with this tier:
Legendaries
Encounters designed to become easier with simple % nerfs.
Encounters designed around LFR
Limited phases to bosses.
Cut scenes
Class stacking
nerfs coming out to soon and now having nothing to do.

TL;DR
Gratz on your kill lore. Go and try these fights without nerfs. Dragon soul sucked. T14 will be awesome.

[The_Pancake]

My opinion on the heroic/normal lockout is that they should make it so that once you've killed a boss on normal you cannot switch to heroic, but are still able to switch back from heroic to normal. Simply because I think locking you to whichever you started with would hurt progression for heroic mode guilds. Because then you end up with a situation such as "we can either try progressing or we can farm loot that will help us progress next week" and I don't think that's a good situation to put people in. This would also adversely affect normal mode guilds that try to start working on heroics, since if they try and find that they're not ready for the first boss yet they've already lost a full week of raiding (plus the next week they'll likely need to do normal again to improve their gear, so it'd be 2 weeks before they have a chance at heroic again, which is the same 2 week gamble).

So I think leaving the option to throw in the towel for heroics and clear the rest on normal for loot (sort of a "consolation prize") is still a good idea. But making it so that you can't turn on heroic mode after a normal mode boss is down means that you can't "skip" the tougher heroic fights and cherry pick the ones you want, if you want to kill boss X on heroic then you have to also kill all the bosses before X on heroic too. This setup will create that linear heroic progression, while not punishing people for stepping into heroic before they're ready to full clear heroic.

[renshia]

i hear a lot of talk about heroic cherry picking and i cant help but think when i and my fellow guildies had to do a well thinking back.... a silly chain of raids/ quests even to get to the point of entering the raid that offered heroics / end content modes... what a mile stone it was to get my necklace. or to meet the requirements to enter sunwell. i remember a lot of non progresion cant even kill the trash to the boss nights.... and to be honest i remember them fondly. i know im old and talking about teirs long past and that bliz made a commitment to have top end teir raiding availiable to the general public. i think lfr has really taken care of that obligation. how cool would it be if you wanted to see it for real that they put some of that pre gear/ fight mechanic back in?just a thought from an old raider who still loves the game.