Also, in regards to IngeKy's post, "dungeons that last 15-30 minutes" cannot possibly equal "pretty difficult", no matter what.
If you can do it in less than half an hour, its a no-brainer. Either its extremely easy to stomp everything on the way to the goal, or the schematic for how to avoid all the nasty bits has been worked out and one dude streaks to the end and teleports everybody else. Twenty minutes later, everybody jumps through the "I won!" portal that opens and you're back in town, sloshing back a cold one.
Although now that I think about it - want a hard, but fast dungeon? ***** the fighting through the trash mobs and navigating tricky mazes. Walk in, there He is, the big, fat, nasty dragon. Everybody pulls out the big guns and immediately starts DPS rotations while the CC guys attempt to block his 50' tail from doing a Massacre Sweep by stunning it so it won't move.
30 minutes later, everybody is back in town and all is well - but for those 1800 seconds previous, you were balls to the wall fighting with everything you had, without space to breathe. Lose the time wasting content that dungeons are currently full of.
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Dungeon runs: length and rewardFollow
Scholar
32 posts
jadyness wrote:
Also, in regards to IngeKy's post, "dungeons that last 15-30 minutes" cannot possibly equal "pretty difficult", no matter what....
Although now that I think about it - want a hard, but fast dungeon? ***** the fighting through the trash mobs and navigating tricky mazes. Walk in, there He is, the big, fat, nasty dragon. Everybody pulls out the big guns and immediately starts DPS rotations while the CC guys attempt to block his 50' tail from doing a Massacre Sweep by stunning it so it won't move....
Although now that I think about it - want a hard, but fast dungeon? ***** the fighting through the trash mobs and navigating tricky mazes. Walk in, there He is, the big, fat, nasty dragon. Everybody pulls out the big guns and immediately starts DPS rotations while the CC guys attempt to block his 50' tail from doing a Massacre Sweep by stunning it so it won't move....
That's certainly the model that WoW tried to use for "30 minute raids", and while people appreciated the loot pinata effect, my understanding is that pretty much everyone got sick of the actual gameplay. My impression is that it just got monotonous after a while, and felt cheap (and lazy on the developer end) to just go in and fight a big boss in one room.
As for your alternative dungeon ideas, I vote you get a job at ANet developing future content. :) I would love to see some dungeons that completely did away with the "kill 3 bosses, repeat" mechanic, in favor of completely unique goals: As you say, finding a specific treasure, avoiding traps to get to the end in a specific time limit (or they could start you out at the bottom of the dungeon, and you'd have to get to the top before the door closed), etc.
I do think ANet has some interesting ideas for dungeons, however, so I have high hopes they'll come up with some neat stuff. But as you point out, probably nothing as dramatic and cool as you're suggesting. :)
jadyness wrote:
Although now that I think about it - want a hard, but fast dungeon? ***** the fighting through the trash mobs and navigating tricky mazes. Walk in, there He is, the big, fat, nasty dragon. Everybody pulls out the big guns and immediately starts DPS rotations while the CC guys attempt to block his 50' tail from doing a Massacre Sweep by stunning it so it won't move.
30 minutes later, everybody is back in town and all is well - but for those 1800 seconds previous, you were balls to the wall fighting with everything you had, without space to breathe. Lose the time wasting content that dungeons are currently full of.
30 minutes later, everybody is back in town and all is well - but for those 1800 seconds previous, you were balls to the wall fighting with everything you had, without space to breathe. Lose the time wasting content that dungeons are currently full of.
That would be an interesting dungeon, interesting and straight to the point.
Huzzah! Let's ship me off to ArenaNet, in a box with airholes! I don't know if it would be my dream job because working creatively with people can be nirvana or hell, depending on who's vision is first among equals. But boy, I'd love to give it a try.
Anyways, the whole 30-minute boss-slaying condensed-like-soup idea isn't my favorite in the slightest just because it does get uber boring, uber fast. One way to spice it up is that the boss itself isn't static, because that's what kills the interest in it. You don't know WHAT you're going to get when you walk in.
Say there's three or four tiers of abilities, with say 10 abilities in each. Tier 1 is a mega attack, Tier 2 is defenses, Tier 3 is general attacks, Tier 4 is weaknesses, etc. The boss gets a single Tier 1 attack, two or three Tier 2 defenses and a handful Tier 3 and 4 ****-somebody-up powers. And you just gotta roll with it.
Sometimes you walk in the door and he's a pushover. Other times, you'll walk into a Wall of Critting Hurt. Y'all takes your chances, yah? Either way, you limp away in 30 minutes and move on with the bragging rights about how YOUR fight was the best that's ever been fought.
And we're talking encounters that those who prefer static fights are going to *hate* with a QQ passion. There won't be a list of instructions to follow meticulously and god help you if you ***** up. Best people could do is mark how certain weaknesses and defenses COULD line up and everybody has to play as best they can.
Brise, I really like the idea of being deposited in the bottom of a dungeon and the point is to get out alive. I'll add on, if I may:
What about you sign on for the run and you actually stay there until you actually Find The Door And Escape? Could be hours. Could be days. You might log in and still be trapped for a week running if you really suck at dungeon navigation. At any point, if it gets too much, you can Call For Rescue and some intrepid NPC party lead by Dirk Dashing paddles up and there's a cut scene of him leading the way, you slinking behind like the helpless cur that you are.
Pen and paper, hells yeah! Bring it on, with yummy graphics, s'il vous plait. That would tie in with previous idea of un-static corridor placement, since if you opt for this run, you can't go in with a pre-known map.
I am all for interesting and complex and time-wasting. Journey is great. Arriving at the end with a passel of tall tales is best. Thereupon to stomp enemies earned along the way, hey? :)
Anyways, the whole 30-minute boss-slaying condensed-like-soup idea isn't my favorite in the slightest just because it does get uber boring, uber fast. One way to spice it up is that the boss itself isn't static, because that's what kills the interest in it. You don't know WHAT you're going to get when you walk in.
Say there's three or four tiers of abilities, with say 10 abilities in each. Tier 1 is a mega attack, Tier 2 is defenses, Tier 3 is general attacks, Tier 4 is weaknesses, etc. The boss gets a single Tier 1 attack, two or three Tier 2 defenses and a handful Tier 3 and 4 ****-somebody-up powers. And you just gotta roll with it.
Sometimes you walk in the door and he's a pushover. Other times, you'll walk into a Wall of Critting Hurt. Y'all takes your chances, yah? Either way, you limp away in 30 minutes and move on with the bragging rights about how YOUR fight was the best that's ever been fought.
And we're talking encounters that those who prefer static fights are going to *hate* with a QQ passion. There won't be a list of instructions to follow meticulously and god help you if you ***** up. Best people could do is mark how certain weaknesses and defenses COULD line up and everybody has to play as best they can.
Brise, I really like the idea of being deposited in the bottom of a dungeon and the point is to get out alive. I'll add on, if I may:
What about you sign on for the run and you actually stay there until you actually Find The Door And Escape? Could be hours. Could be days. You might log in and still be trapped for a week running if you really suck at dungeon navigation. At any point, if it gets too much, you can Call For Rescue and some intrepid NPC party lead by Dirk Dashing paddles up and there's a cut scene of him leading the way, you slinking behind like the helpless cur that you are.
Pen and paper, hells yeah! Bring it on, with yummy graphics, s'il vous plait. That would tie in with previous idea of un-static corridor placement, since if you opt for this run, you can't go in with a pre-known map.
I am all for interesting and complex and time-wasting. Journey is great. Arriving at the end with a passel of tall tales is best. Thereupon to stomp enemies earned along the way, hey? :)
Scholar
32 posts
There are two entangled problems with any sort of randomized boss: The first is that you might randomly get a boss who winds up almost unbeatable for your party - I.e. you brought all casters, and he just happened to pull every "anti-magic" ability possible.
Yes, you could probably design around it with "can't get ability X with ability A" clauses, but you're never going to get away from the fact that sometimes it's going to get a really easy set of abilities, and sometimes it's going to be really, really hard to kill.
Which raises to the second point: Do you allow people to leave and re-enter to get a new random set of abilities? If not, it's "unfair" because some people get the same gear for "less effort". If you do, then everyone just keeps leaving and coming back until they get an easy set of abilities to deal with.
The point of all this is, once you go down that road every problem demands an increasingly complicated solution, which is exactly what we see when Blizzard tries to get fancy - a pile of arbitrary rules and restrictions. I much prefer your original plan of doing away with bosses entirely - it's the simplest solution, and thus the best. :)
As to your expansion on my "start at the bottom idea", I love it! You could even just add a town portal type item so you can leave the dungeon and come back at a later time. Let it scale with the dynamic event engine, so you can start with 4 people, come back solo the next day, bring 3 friends the day after, etc. There's no reason to really trap people down there, or force them to do the whole maze at once - let me spend a month trying to map the whole thing one hour at a time - why not?
It seems like a pretty simple type of content to implement, actually - but as we've said, it's not really a match for GW2. Ah well, some day!
Edited, Jan 13th 2011 1:40pm by BriseBonBons
Yes, you could probably design around it with "can't get ability X with ability A" clauses, but you're never going to get away from the fact that sometimes it's going to get a really easy set of abilities, and sometimes it's going to be really, really hard to kill.
Which raises to the second point: Do you allow people to leave and re-enter to get a new random set of abilities? If not, it's "unfair" because some people get the same gear for "less effort". If you do, then everyone just keeps leaving and coming back until they get an easy set of abilities to deal with.
The point of all this is, once you go down that road every problem demands an increasingly complicated solution, which is exactly what we see when Blizzard tries to get fancy - a pile of arbitrary rules and restrictions. I much prefer your original plan of doing away with bosses entirely - it's the simplest solution, and thus the best. :)
As to your expansion on my "start at the bottom idea", I love it! You could even just add a town portal type item so you can leave the dungeon and come back at a later time. Let it scale with the dynamic event engine, so you can start with 4 people, come back solo the next day, bring 3 friends the day after, etc. There's no reason to really trap people down there, or force them to do the whole maze at once - let me spend a month trying to map the whole thing one hour at a time - why not?
It seems like a pretty simple type of content to implement, actually - but as we've said, it's not really a match for GW2. Ah well, some day!
Edited, Jan 13th 2011 1:40pm by BriseBonBons
BriseBonBons wrote:
The point of all this is, once you go down that road every problem demands an increasingly complicated solution, which is exactly what we see when Blizzard tries to get fancy - a pile of arbitrary rules and restrictions. I much prefer your original plan of doing away with bosses entirely - it's the simplest solution, and thus the best :)
Occam's Razor rules again.
I bow to your wisdom, sir. Or ma'am.
Edited, Jan 14th 2011 10:20am by jadyness
Scholar
32 posts
Sorry I wasn't trying to question your idea or have any particular wisdom of my own - I was just hoping to show, by contrast, how good your initial idea of removing bosses entirely was. :) That is compared to the typical overcomplicated mess that developers often get caught up in these days.
Ah, whatever. Enough apologizing - suffice to say, I love the idea of making dungeons about things other than killing bosses, and I also like the idea of the 30 minute super-intense dungeon, but it starts to become problematic to balance, and isn't quite as simple and elegant as your boss-free idea. Hope my post didn't come across as needlessly critical, I just get stuck on trying to break ideas...
Also Sir, for what it's worth. I understand with a handle like "Bonbons" it can be uncertain. ^^
Ah, whatever. Enough apologizing - suffice to say, I love the idea of making dungeons about things other than killing bosses, and I also like the idea of the 30 minute super-intense dungeon, but it starts to become problematic to balance, and isn't quite as simple and elegant as your boss-free idea. Hope my post didn't come across as needlessly critical, I just get stuck on trying to break ideas...
Also Sir, for what it's worth. I understand with a handle like "Bonbons" it can be uncertain. ^^
No, no, you have the right of it. I was starting to get carried away on the wave of my own internal pressure to add more ornamentation to things. I read your reply and had a moment of epiphany. I probably should have shaved my head, banged a gong and solemnized the whole event.
I'm not so old school that I'm willing to bang my head against a digital wall for five months waiting for the Thing to drop off Boss#3. On the other hand, I have cheerfully run dungeons that took seven hours to complete - and not back in the mists of time either, in the dark days of MMO youth. No, these things still exist out there, today! I admit, when I get the sense that people consider a long dungeon to be anything over an hour... well, okay. Most of us aren't footloose and fancy free teenagers anymore, so devoting solid chunks of time is definitely more difficult.
On the other hand, when I love a game, I find the time to do the fun things in it because it's a hobby, same as folding origami animals - which ALSO can take seven hours. I definitely think there should be something for everyone, within the limits of developer code time. The fast and furious, the slow and savory, the plain mess-with-your-head that you could only get in MYST.
The fact that "dungeons" have been dumbed down to one thing, and one thing only (kill boss, collect loot) makes me itch for ANYTHING that breaks the mold, no matter how inane or off the wall.
Y'know?
ArenaNet, hear my plea!
Edited, Jan 14th 2011 9:13pm by jadyness
I'm not so old school that I'm willing to bang my head against a digital wall for five months waiting for the Thing to drop off Boss#3. On the other hand, I have cheerfully run dungeons that took seven hours to complete - and not back in the mists of time either, in the dark days of MMO youth. No, these things still exist out there, today! I admit, when I get the sense that people consider a long dungeon to be anything over an hour... well, okay. Most of us aren't footloose and fancy free teenagers anymore, so devoting solid chunks of time is definitely more difficult.
On the other hand, when I love a game, I find the time to do the fun things in it because it's a hobby, same as folding origami animals - which ALSO can take seven hours. I definitely think there should be something for everyone, within the limits of developer code time. The fast and furious, the slow and savory, the plain mess-with-your-head that you could only get in MYST.
The fact that "dungeons" have been dumbed down to one thing, and one thing only (kill boss, collect loot) makes me itch for ANYTHING that breaks the mold, no matter how inane or off the wall.
Y'know?
ArenaNet, hear my plea!
Edited, Jan 14th 2011 9:13pm by jadyness
I think there could be a place for hoard mode dungeons with no bosses, but not to the point where all bosses are removed. Likewise making things more complex isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I also think randomized bosses could be a good thing... run into the wrong boss for your set up and you're up the creek without a canoe; but adventuring is supposed to have an element of risk and danger to it. The fact that you're facing the same thing every time makes the game boring. Eventually you need to have something new. I hope the dynamic events are randomized to. Changing up the builds and composition of the foes you meet would keep people on their toes.
I also think randomized bosses could be a good thing... run into the wrong boss for your set up and you're up the creek without a canoe; but adventuring is supposed to have an element of risk and danger to it. The fact that you're facing the same thing every time makes the game boring. Eventually you need to have something new. I hope the dynamic events are randomized to. Changing up the builds and composition of the foes you meet would keep people on their toes.
Scholar
32 posts
To be clear, I'm a huge fan of randomization to the point of "unfairness" in games. For example, if I had it my way, potions or other items would drop from monsters and you wouldn't know what they did - only their color. The item could heal you, it could give you a buff, or it could poison you or curse you. I think that sort of thing is definitely in the spirit of RPGs, and would make getting loot much more exciting. :)
However, I think it's clear that the vast majority of people don't think that way. They want to go in the dungeon and have an uneventful run, so they can get the gear they want and leave ASAP.
Sure, I think this attitude is rubbish and should change. But it will take a long time and a lot of work, for millions of players to come around to the idea that it's OK for them to get screwed and pull a random boss they can't beat. If you tried to just drop that sort of system into a game, way too many people would either quit outright, or run to the forums and cause a huge nightmare for the CMs and mods.
It's unfortunate, but that's where the MMORPG community is at right now, in terms of their expectations and patience for new ideas. :/
However, I think it's clear that the vast majority of people don't think that way. They want to go in the dungeon and have an uneventful run, so they can get the gear they want and leave ASAP.
Sure, I think this attitude is rubbish and should change. But it will take a long time and a lot of work, for millions of players to come around to the idea that it's OK for them to get screwed and pull a random boss they can't beat. If you tried to just drop that sort of system into a game, way too many people would either quit outright, or run to the forums and cause a huge nightmare for the CMs and mods.
It's unfortunate, but that's where the MMORPG community is at right now, in terms of their expectations and patience for new ideas. :/
horrible mental image.
middle of battle, you pop an orange potion, hoping to high hell that it cures you instead of cursing you. instead - you turn into a rabbit.
a few seconds later, somebody else turns into a rabbit. maybe an ally, maybe an enemy. for thirty seconds on a random number counting which second the next proc happens, more people turn into rabbits.
if three or more rabbits can manage to hop close enough together before the thirty seconds are over and you revert back, you can merge into Mega Rabbit and launch a devastating Carrot Crush.
then again, so could the enemy.
YOU'LL NEVER DRINK A POTION AGAIN!
middle of battle, you pop an orange potion, hoping to high hell that it cures you instead of cursing you. instead - you turn into a rabbit.
a few seconds later, somebody else turns into a rabbit. maybe an ally, maybe an enemy. for thirty seconds on a random number counting which second the next proc happens, more people turn into rabbits.
if three or more rabbits can manage to hop close enough together before the thirty seconds are over and you revert back, you can merge into Mega Rabbit and launch a devastating Carrot Crush.
then again, so could the enemy.
YOU'LL NEVER DRINK A POTION AGAIN!
Scholar
32 posts
LOL Jadyness, that's a hilarious mental image, I'd say. :)
The colored potion idea is specifically from Dungeon Crawl, one of many roguelikes available for free online.
I've had a few games where a fight would go badly, and I'd just start chugging all the random potions in my inventory that I hadn't gotten up the nerve to identify yet - hoping one would be a healing potion. Once or twice I got lucky. Other times I got teleported across the dungeon, turned invisible, or poisoned.
But of course, in those games, the point is just to see how long you can survive (typically measured in the minutes), so if you die because your orange potion was actually poison it doesn't really hurt your feelings. In GW2, obviously such a system isn't quite as viable. :)
The colored potion idea is specifically from Dungeon Crawl, one of many roguelikes available for free online.
I've had a few games where a fight would go badly, and I'd just start chugging all the random potions in my inventory that I hadn't gotten up the nerve to identify yet - hoping one would be a healing potion. Once or twice I got lucky. Other times I got teleported across the dungeon, turned invisible, or poisoned.
But of course, in those games, the point is just to see how long you can survive (typically measured in the minutes), so if you die because your orange potion was actually poison it doesn't really hurt your feelings. In GW2, obviously such a system isn't quite as viable. :)
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