'Boss' Encounters!

Arremus

Cadet
Boss encounters.

Blurb
They are the bane of most current MMOs because they represent one enemy dude standing there, a bigger version of the smaller dudes linked to him or her. You kill that dude and the other little dudes and a big shiny chest seems to drop out his @$$.
Someone gets 'Unoriginal Boss Loot Item #53410xfr1' and you all exit the zone, and possibly go kill the bigger dude and the little dudes again, if not locked out, in the hopes of having 'Unoriginal Boss Loot Item #26532bnf0' drop cos the Priest needs it to be a "real Priest".
Of course it never drops. Least not when you're in the group.

This, in my mind, is one of the major downfalls with what is considered acceptable 'end game' and 'end level' (as in get 5 level 43 people together to take out that level 46 boss in an Instance). Clear out the Instance, find the boss (+ minions). Kill boss with the unnaturally huge HP pool to make it a challenge. Get loot. Go home. Brag.
Bored.
End blurb.

As you can tell, I'm sick and tired of that felgercarb sort of content in MMOs, and it plagues most of them - if not all.

So what I am proposing is this:
Let's get some ideas going for what you consider really good 'Boss' fight encounters. I'm not talking about quests here. More major encounters to end Instances, or open world bosses that you may encounter with your group.
I know the Simugods read these forums, so hopefully some of our ideas can get a foothold with them.

To be open and honest about it, the whole idea for this thread came about while I was working on my own writing. Nowadays, whenever I work on plot or characters, skills and classes etc within my novels' world, I always find myself thinking about how the ideas would convert to an MMO environment.

Now to the crutch of the post... :blink: .. or crux. Whatever you prefer.

What's your ideas??
Ok, ok, I'll start with one of mine. It may not be all that original but I can't remember seeing anything like this so far:

The Setting.
Ok, bare with me.

There is a Temple of sorts that holds a very important artifact. A person. This person sleeps, in a deep meditation, and could awake at any time. While asleep, this person is very vulnerable, so is protected by Guardians.

These Guardians are the 'bosses' of the zone/instance.
The idea behind them is that they were created (they are Spiritual Magic beings) to be undefeatable - obviously.

*There are 8 Guardians, all 8 essentially being one symbiotic creature.
*If you attack one, the other 7 come.
*If you kill one, the energy of the dead one is absorbed into the other 7.
*If you kill 2, the six remaining absorb the energy of dead 2, becoming 25% stronger or such. Excuse my maths...
*So your group has killed 4, but the challenge is actually getting harder, is the 4 that are still alive are now as strong as the 8, and thus hit harder, have more armour etc.
*Eventually/possibly you will get to the point of having killed 7 and there is only 1 left, but that 1 has absorbed the strength of all the other 7, so you're still left with one boss 7 times stronger than when that individual was attacked.

Does all that make sense?
Add into the encounter environmental combatants, and the possibility of the sleeping person to awake and attack you with his or her own perks (to be thought on, because he awakes early in the books so it's not an issue! :P ) I think something like this could have the possibility to be a lot more engrossing and TACTICAL (!!!!) encounter than just Bob and His Two Hangers On type boss fights.

Oooook this is way too long as is.
So what I am proposing is let's get together and think up some really unique boss encounters for the Simu guys to possibly discuss (plus to let the know we really want a challenge!) and maybe modify and implement.

So.. post!
 
Originally posted by Arremus
Someone gets 'Unoriginal Boss Loot Item #53410xfr1' and you all exit the zone, and possibly go kill the bigger dude and the little dudes again, if not locked out, in the hopes of having 'Unoriginal Boss Loot Item #26532bnf0' drop cos the Priest needs it to be a "real Priest".

Okay, I'm not exactly responding with a new boss idea, but I would like to see cooler drops. For one thing, I'm one of those people who get annoyed seeing a rabbit I just killed drop 10 gold and a small dagger (despite the rabbit never having tried to bribe me for its life or stab my ankle). Having loot items that are mandatory for having a decent character stink even worse. What I propose is maybe have the boss drop items that make sense. On top of that, make some of the items completely useless combat-wise. I think it'd be awesome to slay something like a giant, then keep one of its eyeballs as a trophy at my player housing. I'd like to see some bosses that are tough as heck, but not required to advance your character in anyway. Just simply killing them for bragging rights (or maybe some other roleplaying idea). I'm annoyed with harvesting big bosses for that rare piece of human-sized platemail-of-uberness they always seem to be carrying in their back pocket. =P
 
Love your boss idea, Arremus. Of course the bosses would have to start out pretty weak, because if they're strong to begin with, then by the time they finish absorbing each other, their too strong to hurt and there's nothing the player can do anymore. Still though, if it were balanced carefully, that would be a really cool boss fight.

One thing that always bothered me about high fantasy games (and kept me away from MMOs) is that it's kind of assumed that most bosses are going to be gargantuan beasts. I think a much cooler boss would be a normal person with abnormal strength. You know a dragon is going to be strong, so it's not all that exciting when you fight one. Yes, it's hard, but you know what your getting into, so there aren't really any surprises. But when you encounter a fellow warrior, you're probably not expecting that kind of challenge, so if he turns out to be incredibly powerful, it doesn't seem so ordinary. He's interesting because he's stronger than you, yet at the same time, just like you. That's why the villains in console RPGs are usually something at least resembling human. They're omnipotence feels unnatural and foreign, yet their forms and personas are familiar. It feels significant to kill a big bad monster, but that just can't compare to the impact of defeating a foe you can relate to.
 
By sheer coincidence, I came across an article on RPGamer.com that pretty much sums up my preference of personified enemies to monsters. The part that's underlined and in bold is the part that's relevant to what I was saying, but the whole article is worth a read.

Props to Nick Colucci. Very insightful.
 
Great post Arremus. I'll take a shot at it now as well...... after I think of one :smiley: However, I promise to reply to this with a boss ideas as well!
 
I have to say my favorite Soopa Villian is Violent J (aka Mr. Diamond).

"My axe I keep with me, sneak with
I creep with, sever skulls and sleep with"

However Esham really screwed it all up. I didn't like him anyway.


I have to say by far though, J is best in Jacob's Word. My favorite.



Or Wagon Wagon

"Some say it's just a hearse, but it's much worse
It's an old dark bucket with a clown curse
Long, dark, very spooky scary
I drink an old 40 bottle full of bloody mary, why
Cuz I'm Violent J, sick in the nug-bone
I make strange sounds, clowns with frowns
Break it on down, break it up till the break of dawn
Look out your window it's the wagon in your front lawn
Ah, boom, aboockaboomba
We do the dance of the death until you get in the car
Then I pull your tongue out slap you in the face with it
Say the joker did it in the..."

But that's a good one too.

I could go on forever.

Like Mr. Happy.


Anyway. I'm just blabbing. (and yes, I know I'm rather off subject)
 
That's an interesting idea except with 8 "mini-bosses" plus the main sleeper you might get a feeling of an endless and redundant dungeon. A more functional approach might be to shorten it to 3 or 4 guardians. What would then be cool is if each had their own personality type/powers/fighting style. If you fought one having the others come might make it over-whelming or the bosses underpowered. You could instead have the remaining bosses appear in an ethreal form over the fallen comrade and absorb it's power before going back to their part of the temple. Heck they could even talk to you and give their take on the situation as they are killed off and individually grow in power.

I am really tired of raids in games with this mentality of different stages the boss goes into. You wind up in a mechanical sort of situation where you are but a cog in a never changing machine that must act when told to to be the most efficient.

I think reducing dungeon "size" needs to be done. Possibly make it more interesting than just running into an area and killing your way to the end. Unlocking rooms/areas would be cool with say levers and such. Perhaps even a timed process involving a bit of coordination(say a 5-10 second window to pull the lever) between a few players. Heck maybe even a puzzle that isn't too difficult but changes each time you enter and might even take on the form of a different puzzle.

The end boss itself doesn't need to be a single thing either I think it would be cool if you were to fight maybe a pair of bosses at the end that would help eachother out.
 
I agree with the pair of bosses. I also think it would be kind of neat to have a boss that you encounter at the start who is trying to accomplish the same thing you are in the dungeon. Whether it be a hidden chest at the end, or solving a riddle. You enter the instance, and he is their.. You quickly kick his trash, but he runs off before you can finish him off. He then randomly encounters you during the dungeon, each time becoming more stronger as he loots the chests ahead of you giving him special powers.

Maybe actually even have it be a race where he doesn't even fight you, but if he gets tot he treasure first, he gets it. You don't, you lose.
 
I don't know about a race, but that multiple encounters thing sounds awesome. I always though it would be fun if you went through a dungeon and had help from other npcs. Possibly have you each take different paths as you come across them and work together.
 
Originally posted by Solaren@May 2 2006, 01:07 PM
I don't know about a race, but that multiple encounters thing sounds awesome. I always though it would be fun if you went through a dungeon and had help from other npcs. Possibly have you each take different paths as you come across them and work together.
I love that idea! They should seriously do that!
 
First off, great post Arremus, I love the sybiotic boss idea.

All I would like to see is mobs that USE the item your expecting to loot... imagine, not ony is a raid boss hard, but on top of the difficulty, he/she/it is acually wearing that breastplate of uberness or wielding the (weapon type) of (race/character/mob) slaying/vorpal/+5/flaming uberness. Of course, you then have to realize that defeating the boss doesnt guarantee the item in question will survive the bout. Weapons break, and armor gets sundered in combat.

Also, lets see some mobs that run for help, or better yet, run to the boss, gathering up his buds and making you take on most of the areas mobs along with the boss at the same time, penalizing the "bull in tyhe china shop" players who love to crash their way through an instance.

Or the opposite, a boss mob who knows when he is outclasse by the party engaging him and runs like hell, denying the party an easy kill (can you say "Ranger tracking needed to complete the encounter"?)

Thats my rant on Boss mobs, let the bashing begin :P

Xhar
 
There should be intelligence in bosses. In WoW, you were in combat, the boss stayed, except for some scripted events. And if we kill a boss on monday, he should be replaced by the next in command, not be resurrected for next monday.

And I dont believe in UBER LOOTS. Not saying that this game is going to be realistic, but basically this sword was as good as that sword. What SHOULD be dropped as Volund said, like a trophy, or something like a key to go to a new area, a map to show you where a lair is, plans to know where to intercept a group of enemies...etc...etc...

A boss should drop what they are using. If a boss is wielding a double bladed sword, Heavy Chain mail, and a ninja hat should not drop A staff, Some Robes and a big voodoo headress. He should have the possibility of dropping the sword, mail, and hat.

And as for Dungeons, when you clear it out, maybe a rival group of baddies takes over, or it comes under control by a freindly faction, maybe a pack of ferocious undead wolves inhabit it. Dungeons should not be the same over and over again.

OR, maybe you DONT kill the Boss, maybe you get him to low health, and he betrays his gang, and you gain a spy? Maybe he helps you take over the base with out clearing out the base.

Just some random ideas being thrown out there.
 
I just want to build off of the Ranger tracking idea. I know a way to make good use of Rangers. Here is my scenario.

You enter a cavern where it is rumored that a Ukar Lord has been hiding. After entering the cavern you notice a camp of Ukar, and quickly ambush them. While setting off again you notice a patrol coming at you. Instead of just insta-aggro like every other game. They run off to find the Ukar Lord who then quickly re-appears a few minutes later with the patrol, and a few others. You quickly disperse of the Ukar, and the Ukar Lord notices that he is going to die, so runs off quickly.

You try to track him down, noteing that your entire quest is to kill the Ukar Lord. As you keep heading down the cavern, you notice it forks into two different directions. This is where the Ranger comes into play. The Ranger class is the only one with 'sight tracking' ability that can notice very discrete marks telling you which way the Ukar Lord went. Whether it be a footprint, a small brush of blood on the wall, or strip of leather. Only the Ranger can find it. Kind of like a mini-CSI event.

After the Ranger tracks down which cavern the Ukar Lord took they keep heading down the cavern. Fighting off Ukar as they come accross, and always the random goblin, or mob in the area. The road keeps forking, becoming, more, and more complex for the Ranger to track.

Finnally they track down the Ukar Lord, and they slay him. Steal his loot, and chop the head to collect the reward.

Something about this scenario could be that every fork is random of which one the Ukar Lord would take. So it's always a puzzle :smiley:
 
Originally posted by Arremus@May 1 2006, 07:15 AM
*There are 8 Guardians, all 8 essentially being one symbiotic creature.
*If you attack one, the other 7 come.
*If you kill one, the energy of the dead one is absorbed into the other 7.
*If you kill 2, the six remaining absorb the energy of dead 2, becoming 25% stronger or such. Excuse my maths...
*So your group has killed 4, but the challenge is actually getting harder, is the 4 that are still alive are now as strong as the 8, and thus hit harder, have more armour etc.
*Eventually/possibly you will get to the point of having killed 7 and there is only 1 left, but that 1 has absorbed the strength of all the other 7, so you're still left with one boss 7 times stronger than when that individual was attacked.
I like this idea alot, both the thread and the suggestion you provided. Thank you for posting. I dreamed up a variant that got me pretty excited...

I actually like the idea of letting the guardians get to the point where they're damn near untouchable. Then you have to somehow get to the sleeper without getting pwned by the giant dude, perhaps thanks to evasive members of the group causing a diversion. You'll have to reduce their numbers because too many of them makes it impossible to get to the sleeper, but you may want to stop killing them at a specific number and focus the channeler, depending on your group makeup. In addition, if you can manage a couple strikes on the sleeper while at the early stages, it will weaken the guardians a little. On that note, I might tend to change the concept to a actively channeling controller rather than a sleeping dude. And hopefully all 8 guardians will be coming at once.

With those concepts in mind, characters' roles would not only depend on their class, but would shift throughout the duration of the battle. To begin with, backstabbers would be trying to swoop in for single shots on the channeler early on, but would be attracting attention and evading later. Tanks would start out sucking up damage from the lesser guardians but would end up trying to dish out max damage-per-second to the general. Ranged heroes would start by constantly aggro-ing guardians on the other side of the battle field, to keep them from focusing on any one group member, but would also want to focus on weakening the shield around the general as dealing damage to him became more important. And of course support will have to re-focus on helping out different teammates as each stage of battle puts a new character in the greatest need.

You realize, of course, such things require massive development effort compaed to "kill the big Ukar." But there's definitely a place for them, and the engine certainly has the potential to allow such things.

My training area, which is not designed for production but was supposed to be reasonably close to production-level standards, was built off the idea of a "non-standard" boss fight (I didn't implement a mission for the area, but the layout lent itself to a particular type of conflict). I'm not on the quest or world team, but should I find myself providing any input on such things, I'll lobby for new and exciting ideas. I'm sure the folks on that side have already dreamed up a lot of innovative things themselves.

Goat
 
Thanks for getting involved Mr Goat Man!

That's some great creative mojo you have going on there. I like it! Can't believe I may have actually contributed something useful in the whole scheme of things! ;) :lol:

Maybe get the quest developing team to bookmark this thread and check back/contribute now and then? *wink*

Can't convey enough how cool it is to have the direct GM contact. So very, very cool! Thanks!
 
Well, I like to see "boss" enounters and "raids" run very differently. In fact, the opposite of what they are in every single EQ clone out there. Here's an new and different idea:
Instead of having to get 50+ PC's to take out a boss, How about having 100+ NPC attacking your party? Where in essence, YOU are the boss, and your up against a legion of enemies. You know, doing hero stuff, like taking out a fortress almost single-handed like in oh, The Lord of the Rings, Or Conan the Barbarian, or any real epic story. Of course you get to go against a couple of bosses at the end, like the movies.
 
Originally posted by Morneblade@May 17 2006, 11:36 AM
Well, I like to see "boss" enounters and "raids" run very differently. In fact, the opposite of what they are in every single EQ clone out there. Here's an new and different idea:
Instead of having to get 50+ PC's to take out a boss, How about having 100+ NPC attacking your party? Where in essence, YOU are the boss, and your up against a legion of enemies. You know, doing hero stuff, like taking out a fortress almost single-handed like in oh, The Lord of the Rings, Or Conan the Barbarian, or any real epic story. Of course you get to go against a couple of bosses at the end, like the movies.
I second this idea! Really cool.
 
I would like to see more ways to 'kill' the boss rather than always have to kill him. Maybe capture him and return him to a town to stand trial...or sweet talk him and have him join you in your next quest.....something new....anything but going to 2 r and 3 n to the cave entrance and bashing the 3 goblins for x stuff and x points.....again and again and again.
 
Hmmm, or make it so bosses have multiple ways of being taken down, depending on our play style, combat strength, or, muhahahaha, whim.

So if we want, we can just kill the boss, but if not, we can sweet talk, etc.
 
I want boss music! I'm talkin Final Fantasy style boss music. FF7 anyone? And when I approach a boss to fight it I want there to be a little cut-scene or something.
 
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