I think the horns from the promotion are a good
place to start. I can see everyone involved getting an ogre horn when
you take down a horde boss, for example.
Horns are obnoxious. There's still a billion undead/horde/etc trapped in certain rooms in death clots, and its irksome to have to clear them out of townes/councils in general when people blow them nearby.
The items that currently drop from boss mobs? Awesome.
Well, how it works in other MMOs is good gear drops for killing big baddies. However, it doesn't work so well in Imperian because of things like artifacts and the player's ability to generate most of these items through commodities.
With the game pretty set in with how weapons, gear, artifacts and stats are worked, it's pretty hard to put something in worth trading that aren't just collectibles. Any temp artifact drops would just get another shrug from most people, massive gold drops would cause inflation that we just got through deflating, and weapon/armor drops would either be artifact level or not worth it.
Asthetic token drops could maybe work, but I don't think it'd be a terribly compelling reason to be grouping for hard bosses.
The trouble is, there needs to be a good incentive for the entire group to go, and dropping something for everyone just seems excessive. An idea off the top of my head would be a new experience counter called "Boss experience" or something that, as it levels up, would give you certain perks or the like, such as special enter/exit messages, or maybe they drop special boss tokens for everyone that can be used to purchase certain things.
As far as bosses being "set X triggers to win" being a problem, I think that's going to be a lot more difficult to solve. After the boss has been done once, then you have that group of people who can tell everyone exactly how to beat it and what triggers to set, thus making the boss not quite as challenging, or honestly, quite as fun to fight anymore.
What could be interesting is that instead of the boss itself being the focus, there are certain objectives that have to be completed. When I run a D&D campaign and it's just a big baddie boss to fight, it's always interesting until you learn all its moves, then it becomes a predictable boss fight that the players tend to get bored of. While this works in regular games without something like triggers, as you need to hone your fingers to react in time, it doesn't work with triggers being present.
So, to counteract that, it would work to add secondary and tertiary objectives to each boss. Why are we fighting this boss? What else is there? What kind of things are we here to do? Instead of the point of the area being, "Go kill boss X," make it instead, "Boss X with minions Y are in the way of obtaining these relics or artifacts," and go on from there. You'll need to split your group up smartly, coordinating objectives with a few people while others engage the boss.
Let's say, for example, Risca has group A, I have group B, and Ziat has group C. We go into Orc Thunder Fortress, where rumours are that they're going to be working a super duper laser thunder cannon that will blow something up if we don't stop it(create dynamic consequences for failure/success would be cool). As we go into the fortress, beginning with regular bashing, we discover pieces lying around, dropped from dead things. Now, we have to find where these pieces go. Say we have a cog, a wrench, a hammer, and an orb.
The wrench and the hammer must be used at the same time from different places, while the cog needs to be run around 3 different rooms, being put in to let certain gears turn to deactivate the protective field around the Thunder cannon. Meanwhile, minions still flood in, forcing people to need to fight while watching for when their buddies complete the other objectives. Big Baddie Thunder Orc of Thunder Fortress begins stomping around too-- His presence at a cog room would cause it to be unworkable, due to his Thundering dissonance effect. He can be killed with enough people and time, like a regular boss, but this would require a lot of time, and time that you might not have before some bad event happens. The orb must be thrown at the weakened field when all activations are done, and there's a short time limit.
Thus, I want my group A to collect the hammer and the wrench, and split into two to hold the wrench and hammer positions. Meanwhile, Risca's group wants to go ahead and engage Big Baddie Thunder Orc of Thunder Fortress to prevent him from getting to any cog rooms. Maybe there's an alternate way of throwing him back if he gets too close that you can do. Ziat's group C now wants to hold the orb and the cog, and be working those 3 rooms while calling out to Group A to use the hammer and wrench. All these can easily be triggered actions, but it wouldn't make them any easier to do. When all objectives have been completed, a final push must be made past the baddies to the field, throwing the orb to blow up the field, thus opening the way to the Thunder cannon to be destroyed.
To promote circle conflict without griefing raids, you could even set up a PvE "war" system-- That is to say, not so much that you're in direct conflict with each other, but that circles, cities, and councils can maintain certain fortresses/strongholds/places of power/whatever and fortify them with gold and shards to make objectives more difficult for another circle. Let minions scale with how many people are there, as to make it so you can't get 40 people zerging to easily win. Furthermore, once a group enters, the area would become 'instanced' so that no one else, ally or enemy, can interfere with the happenings.
Give certain rewards for winning, but not be too harsh if the group loses. Maybe the city has to fund the expedition with X amount of gold and shards per attack opportunity, or something of the like. Allowing cities and councils to build lore within those areas would also be pretty cool, and somehow integrating sects and entities into it all would be pretty neat, too.
Anyway, there's my wall of text of ideas. Not the most coherent of things, but eh, take it as you will.
I like the way Wyr is handled. It's not a command you have to pause and do to save someone every so often, and, at least the way Septus, Azefel, and I handled it required coordination and communication between us to ensure we didn't die and to ensure Wyr didn't get to recover.
Similarly, I think Rynar and Irqua are good as well. Irqua requires multiple steps to ensure everyone doesn't die, and it's a good process imo. Rynar is good because it's a different process from everything else, and, while it's not terribly difficult to handle what he does (unless you're an enormous newb like me and screw everything up for everyone ), it's still different and interesting.
I think the biggest problem is how big a lot of the groups end up being. I had a ton of fun and it was challenging and interesting when it was just Septus and I trying to see if we could handle it ourselves, and felt genuinely rewarding when we did. Even groups of 3 or 4 were still fairly challenging, but it's difficult to expect small groups like that to respond to new shiny honours denizens.
Holy crap. The bosses aren't even a month old. This is Imperian's first foray into actual boss encounters. This is four years over due, after Lavinia practically begged for them. Of course they're going to be figuring out how to present a difficult scenario without the same people crying now crying about omg, y this so hard. Thus far, every boss encounter has been pretty fun. I don't blame them for telegraphing the maneuvers and only having one maneuver per boss. You guys would whine if it didn't. :P
In a text based game there's only so much that can be done to eliminate the issue of automation. I think a good deal of the bosses have done an amazing job of it so far (Photh still ruins my day, and the text walls of people getting scythe'd speak for themselves).
Personally I've enjoyed all the bosses so far, and that's good enough for me.
Yeah, not a major fan of the killing blow getting a prize and everyone else being shafted of the person that got the reward is a dick (pun intended). I like horns, wandering goblins are no more annoying than the wandering undead, and I like the idea of smaller versions of the soulstones. They would both work for me as prizes, along with enough experience to make up for a death or two. Don't like horns, don't fight a boss that drops a horn. Don't like shard pieces, don't fight a boss that drops a shard. Even a limited version of the beans would work. I think essentially, as long as each player gets rewarded and no prize is worth more than a credit or two, people will kill them sometimes, but they won't be a farming hazard. Maybe just change a few mobs and give it a test run? Also, temp arties are still fine with me. What's up Celerity Belt?
Bosses could maybe give everyone in the killing party something like one or two random pieces of an idol from HELP IDOLS. That way, everyone gets rewarded every time, but you generally have to kill more than one boss to get a full set and craft one of the completed rewards.
Since the base code is already there, it probably wouldn't be terribly
difficult to make a whole spectrum of idols with effects ranging from bashing boosts to temporary non-pet mounts to whatever other benefits people want to see. Since idols have only a limited number of charges, they're an ideal mechanic for effects that would promote long-term sustainability of boss hunting.
I think the curio system from Lusternia, while misguided and blown out of proportion in terms of power/significance (like all ideas from that game), would be an interesting thing to put a spin on for the bosses.
For those that are unaware, curios are a set of pieces you assemble in to a full item and can configure to confer special benefits on you. In a way, they resemble Idols here and set items from Diablo 2 or World of Warcraft - assemble enough pieces of the 'Scorpion Curio' and you have benefits in regards to poisons and poison damage. They are often promotion items or event items. The benefits in Lusternia are pretty stupid and contribute to their ever increasing power creep, but I'm sure we have a better head on our shoulders over here in regards to effects.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Only problem with adopting curios directly is that, like achievements,
they tend to be something that people put in the time to grind once and
then never need to look at again.
Lusternia's new quest-for-curios
mechanic was part of my inspiration for suggesting we use idols as boss rewards,
since they both share the same piece building system that was successful over there. I went with idols though
since they also 'run out', and need to be gathered more than once.
Imperian doesn't need another way to imbalance combat. Nothing in Lusternia sounds particularly interesting or well thought out, curious doesn't seem like it's breaking that trend. Shards at least keeps a little life in the game, despite falling short of it's potential. Curious just sounds like a system people would farm for lolpurpz. It's a dumb system that would just muck things up further.
The way this is playing out, 2-3 players are doing the work and 18 people are benefiting. Getting an achievement and a little bit of gold is good enough for most people. Tie the bosses in with quests, give gold, give xp and a random temporary. For some people, they roleplay killing big nasty monsters. Or at least that's what Lio is doing in Khandava. That should be enough.
On an only tangentially related note: This entire discussion has reminded me of Monster Hunter, and now I will be picturing Lionas in tribal warpaint carving up monster remains at the Monarch Square.
On an only tangentially related note: This entire discussion has reminded me of Monster Hunter, and now I will be picturing Lionas in tribal warpaint carving up monster remains at the Monarch Square.
Wild Hunt is largely a 'Monster Hunter' sect, though I haven't been able to grab enough people to do some RP and strigoi-killing at the same time.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
That's what makes this the best time to bring it up. They're not done with them all, and it's new enough that they aren't entrenched.
And I think they could use work. The inherent limitations to PvE in Imperian means that after the first few kills, the boss is a solved problem and thusly not a particularly rewarding experience. I've already been in boss groups where I was given the trigger messages before even seeing the boss for the first time. And there's little to no player skill involved in the actual kill. So the eventual fate of these bosses is "Hey, who wants to help me get <artifact>? Anybody? Anybody?"
Myself, I'd be happy with something like "Everybody who's tagged the boss and who is in the room when the boss dies gets a quest item, which can be turned in for decent quest exp and a gold reward."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Quest xp works out for the group, I think. Gold? No, we just got through a long period of deflating the over-saturated economy, I don't think we need to create inflation again. The biggest trouble with this sort of inflation is that the gold would go towards the high level artifact-laden sort of people who have the ability to generate more gold than everyone else to begin with-- There's really no need to give them more ways to generate gold.
That being said, it'd be cool if there were bosses for lower levels or something. I mean, it'd be weird that you could miss out on content just by being too high level, and I don't really have any ideas for fixing that, but it'd let lower level folk have the excitement of boss battles too. Gold drops for bosses going towards newbies and level 60 and below would help make it easier to compete against aspect gold generators, and even out the gold disparity.
@khizan I had semi considered doing something where everyone who participates in the kill gets some items, however there are problems with that. Fear not, we will keep evolving the boss idea and rewards as we want to keep adding more and more of them to the game.
Are the shards that you currently receive for these bosses linked to your character? If they aren't, then they could act as gold generators currently, if anyone preferred a few credits over the effects of the shard pieces.
Are the shards that you currently receive for these bosses linked to your character? If they aren't, then they could act as gold generators currently, if anyone preferred a few credits over the effects of the shard pieces.
The soulstones they drop are bound to you as if you had them from a giftbag -- they're tradeable.
I am the righteous one... the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Which means they can be traded for currency. If they're sold for even one credit each, that means that they are worth more than any other bosses currently (that I'm aware of). Now, I don't have an opinion about gold as a prize from bosses, my main point is that I'd prefer to see the prize divided among those that were there.
In one of the few boss fights I've participated in(also the first time anyone attempted any of the Strigoi) Victor Moradeim'ed in at the tail-end of the fight, after all the effort had been made to figure out the tactics involved in the fight, and with so many people in the room that losing to the boss was next to impossible, and got the last hit. Without having put any real effort into the fight, or having died any significant number of times participating, he ran off with the artifact, the body(worth a few thousand), the gold drop(a few more thousand), and the shard(an onyx shard, worth at least a credit if I'm not mistaken). The rest of us got nothing but a little experience (not enough to make up for the deaths spent figuring out the boss), the qhonour, and progress towards an achievement.
Not saying that this is a situation that happens a lot, but between this type of situation and the difficulty/inability to split a prize like a shard or temp artifact, it'd just be nice for a prize that was more easily split among a group, and for that prize to be automatically split without needing the consent of whoever got the last hit. Since you're already tracking everyone that participates, I'd imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to give a prize(horn, 1-hour version of shard, etc) to each participant as well the temp arti to the one that gets the last hit. Also, before people knee-jerk, I'm not saying that every boss should work like this, and I'm not saying that none of the current prizes are fine, I'd just like to see that idea explored on a boss or two to see how well it works.
The problem with restricting battles to newbies/lowbies and below is that they may well turn out like the group quests in WoW leveling areas did. "Wow, I'd love to do this. Too bad there's nobody else at an appropriate level for it and I can't solo it."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
The problem with restricting battles to newbies/lowbies and below is that they may well turn out like the group quests in WoW leveling areas did. "Wow, I'd love to do this. Too bad there's nobody else at an appropriate level for it and I can't solo it."
Clearly we need cross server grouping with the rest of IRE.
Couldn't we have a way to check to see who contributed the most damage and affected the most actionable events for boss rewards?
No. First, what would this accomplish? Second, this would be skewed because some of the boss encounters CC a player for a boss mechanic. How would you feel if scrub druid #167 beat you in DPS because you spent most of your time in the pyre? It's really a meaningless metric.
Couldn't we have a way to check to see who contributed the most damage and affected the most actionable events for boss rewards?
Did you seriously follow up that WoW comment with a request for Recount: The Sundered Heavens?
>.> possibly......
Merely a suggestion. Guess we could accumilate everything I say and go the opposite direction for what I wanted, and we'd probably reach the objectives needed.
Comments
Horns are obnoxious. There's still a billion undead/horde/etc trapped in certain rooms in death clots, and its irksome to have to clear them out of townes/councils in general when people blow them nearby.
The items that currently drop from boss mobs? Awesome.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
With the game pretty set in with how weapons, gear, artifacts and stats are worked, it's pretty hard to put something in worth trading that aren't just collectibles. Any temp artifact drops would just get another shrug from most people, massive gold drops would cause inflation that we just got through deflating, and weapon/armor drops would either be artifact level or not worth it.
Asthetic token drops could maybe work, but I don't think it'd be a terribly compelling reason to be grouping for hard bosses.
The trouble is, there needs to be a good incentive for the entire group to go, and dropping something for everyone just seems excessive. An idea off the top of my head would be a new experience counter called "Boss experience" or something that, as it levels up, would give you certain perks or the like, such as special enter/exit messages, or maybe they drop special boss tokens for everyone that can be used to purchase certain things.
So, to counteract that, it would work to add secondary and tertiary objectives to each boss. Why are we fighting this boss? What else is there? What kind of things are we here to do? Instead of the point of the area being, "Go kill boss X," make it instead, "Boss X with minions Y are in the way of obtaining these relics or artifacts," and go on from there. You'll need to split your group up smartly, coordinating objectives with a few people while others engage the boss.
Let's say, for example, Risca has group A, I have group B, and Ziat has group C. We go into Orc Thunder Fortress, where rumours are that they're going to be working a super duper laser thunder cannon that will blow something up if we don't stop it(create dynamic consequences for failure/success would be cool). As we go into the fortress, beginning with regular bashing, we discover pieces lying around, dropped from dead things. Now, we have to find where these pieces go. Say we have a cog, a wrench, a hammer, and an orb.
Thus, I want my group A to collect the hammer and the wrench, and split into two to hold the wrench and hammer positions. Meanwhile, Risca's group wants to go ahead and engage Big Baddie Thunder Orc of Thunder Fortress to prevent him from getting to any cog rooms. Maybe there's an alternate way of throwing him back if he gets too close that you can do. Ziat's group C now wants to hold the orb and the cog, and be working those 3 rooms while calling out to Group A to use the hammer and wrench. All these can easily be triggered actions, but it wouldn't make them any easier to do. When all objectives have been completed, a final push must be made past the baddies to the field, throwing the orb to blow up the field, thus opening the way to the Thunder cannon to be destroyed.
Give certain rewards for winning, but not be too harsh if the group loses. Maybe the city has to fund the expedition with X amount of gold and shards per attack opportunity, or something of the like. Allowing cities and councils to build lore within those areas would also be pretty cool, and somehow integrating sects and entities into it all would be pretty neat, too.
Anyway, there's my wall of text of ideas. Not the most coherent of things, but eh, take it as you will.
Similarly, bosses could drop items similar to clovers, beans, etc. Though, I think beans would be too good a reward.
I'd be fine with seeing everyone involved in the fight get a lesser version of those (I'm thinking one hour duration, instead of eight).
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Similarly, I think Rynar and Irqua are good as well. Irqua requires multiple steps to ensure everyone doesn't die, and it's a good process imo. Rynar is good because it's a different process from everything else, and, while it's not terribly difficult to handle what he does (unless you're an enormous newb like me and screw everything up for everyone
I think the biggest problem is how big a lot of the groups end up being. I had a ton of fun and it was challenging and interesting when it was just Septus and I trying to see if we could handle it ourselves, and felt genuinely rewarding when we did. Even groups of 3 or 4 were still fairly challenging, but it's difficult to expect small groups like that to respond to new shiny honours denizens.
Give them time.
In a text based game there's only so much that can be done to eliminate the issue of automation. I think a good deal of the bosses have done an amazing job of it so far (Photh still ruins my day, and the text walls of people getting scythe'd speak for themselves).
Personally I've enjoyed all the bosses so far, and that's good enough for me.
ivory brooch is where it's at.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Since the base code is already there, it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult to make a whole spectrum of idols with effects ranging from bashing boosts to temporary non-pet mounts to whatever other benefits people want to see. Since idols have only a limited number of charges, they're an ideal mechanic for effects that would promote long-term sustainability of boss hunting.
For those that are unaware, curios are a set of pieces you assemble in to a full item and can configure to confer special benefits on you. In a way, they resemble Idols here and set items from Diablo 2 or World of Warcraft - assemble enough pieces of the 'Scorpion Curio' and you have benefits in regards to poisons and poison damage. They are often promotion items or event items. The benefits in Lusternia are pretty stupid and contribute to their ever increasing power creep, but I'm sure we have a better head on our shoulders over here in regards to effects.
Lusternia's new quest-for-curios mechanic was part of my inspiration for suggesting we use idols as boss rewards, since they both share the same piece building system that was successful over there. I went with idols though since they also 'run out', and need to be gathered more than once.
Also for letting us feed the old Wytchen tutor to a flesh-eating water horse. Ohai, kelpies.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
That's what makes this the best time to bring it up. They're not done with them all, and it's new enough that they aren't entrenched.
And I think they could use work. The inherent limitations to PvE in Imperian means that after the first few kills, the boss is a solved problem and thusly not a particularly rewarding experience. I've already been in boss groups where I was given the trigger messages before even seeing the boss for the first time. And there's little to no player skill involved in the actual kill. So the eventual fate of these bosses is "Hey, who wants to help me get <artifact>? Anybody? Anybody?"
Myself, I'd be happy with something like "Everybody who's tagged the boss and who is in the room when the boss dies gets a quest item, which can be turned in for decent quest exp and a gold reward."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
>.> possibly......
Merely a suggestion. Guess we could accumilate everything I say and go the opposite direction for what I wanted, and we'd probably reach the objectives needed.