Suggestions on high end game difficulty of the game

[DissentWomble]

Love the game A++ effort to everyone involved and definitely not in a condescending way. Just a random suggestion to the current murmurs of the player base that wants end game but not a bullet sponge kind of bosses like the wolf or a level 5 lich. 

Heres an old mmo i used to play 

 This kinda encompass my general idea of how you can make the game more difficult but not really in a bullet sponge kinda way. You can visibly see where the boss attacks are going to be and they're fixed so it rewards players that practice the stage. Stay in said area and you'll take alot of damage. Mind you the char in the vid is a very good char that uses alot of invincibility frames with his skills so it may look like hes standing on a danger area and not taking damage. And the damage in most cases are fatal forcing the player to revive or in this particular game just fail altogether. It will take one revive for 1 mistake and it changes depending on attack,

There are also sequences where one player will get a debuff from the boss and anyone who sticks around that said player will get an dot damage. There are also sequences where a player will be debuffed and everyone needs to be around that said player as the boss casts an aoe attack where anyone who isn't around the debuffed player will get fatal damage.This will force players to move together in boss fights, players need to be aware of the teams positioning, and communicate with the team better. 

I understand this will need a lot of work in terms of coding and i'm not saying that all bosses needs to be redesigned this way. Imo it is a good structure for end game content that can be implemented into the game for future raids or any higher tier contents. Players seems to be against the whole bullet sponge thing and its about time players are tested more than just what they have in terms of arsenal and how much they've farmed.

Just a suggestion. Thanks for your time.

 

 

[gluih]

This is actually a very lazy way of implementing a mechanic like this. Good games don't give players a warning in the form of a marked area on the floor, but in a way that naturally fits into the game. Warframe really struggles with making the damage proportional to the amount of time players have to react.

The Kela de Thaym fight is a good example.
It has the orbital strikes, which actually give the players enough time to react. Those are very much like what is shown in the video, so you don't want too many. Overall they are a pretty good mechanic imo.
And then there are the rockets, that she can launch from her shoulder. Those are way too fast and turn way too quickly. As a result they are way too difficult to avoid. As a result you can't really react to them and the better option are to either just be tanky or invulnerable enough or to hop around like mad. If the rockets were slower and didn't home in as much, it would be much more fun and wouldn't push players to cheesy methods.

[DissentWomble]

21 hours ago, gluih said:

This is actually a very lazy way of implementing a mechanic like this. Good games don't give players a warning in the form of a marked area on the floor, but in a way that naturally fits into the game. Warframe really struggles with making the damage proportional to the amount of time players have to react.

The Kela de Thaym fight is a good example.
It has the orbital strikes, which actually give the players enough time to react. Those are very much like what is shown in the video, so you don't want too many. Overall they are a pretty good mechanic imo.
And then there are the rockets, that she can launch from her shoulder. Those are way too fast and turn way too quickly. As a result they are way too difficult to avoid. As a result you can't really react to them and the better option are to either just be tanky or invulnerable enough or to hop around like mad. If the rockets were slower and didn't home in as much, it would be much more fun and wouldn't push players to cheesy methods.

For that game they need to implement the marked areas because of the time needed to react is short and the consequence is big. That dungeon is for 8 players and each has screen blinding skills that makes it important to have graphic cues like that. Most of the damage is one or 2 hit before dying in that raid stage when its first available to public. But thats the thing, I'm ok with the Kela de Thaym fight as its a common boss fight. What i'm suggesting is making it harsher and faster for a higher tier dungeon like a boss raid.

I'm saying using that bombing sequence more often and freely in a boss design. I agree the game should use it in a way that fits naturally into the game but as per your example for the Keyla fight, the game needs to bump up the speed of attacks and test the players response times. Remove the 5 seconds countdown from the Kela bombing sequence, make it a 2 seconds delay and make a safe zone on a platform on the edges of the map. Punish the players if they don't know how to avoid an attack. Its ok, its supposed to be a challenge and players will learn either from wasting a revive or just from youtube. 

It what makes souls games work and challenging without needing OP gears and bullet sponges. It what makes something like beating a gold lynel in Zelda Botw with a soup ladle fun. Players are actually challenged and acquires muscle memory to defeat a boss.You can go fight a Lynel with a full barbarian set and the best Lynel weapons all you want but it will still rape you if you don't know how to evade and rush attack it.

 

[gluih]

48 minutes ago, DissentWomble said:

For that game they need to implement the marked areas because of the time needed to react is short and the consequence is big. That dungeon is for 8 players and each has screen blinding skills that makes it important to have graphic cues like that. Most of the damage is one or 2 hit before dying in that raid stage when its first available to public. But thats the thing, I'm ok with the Kela de Thaym fight as its a common boss fight. What i'm suggesting is making it harsher and faster for a higher tier dungeon like a boss raid.

I'm saying using that bombing sequence more often and freely in a boss design. I agree the game should use it in a way that fits naturally into the game but as per your example for the Keyla fight, the game needs to bump up the speed of attacks and test the players response times. Remove the 5 seconds countdown from the Kela bombing sequence, make it a 2 seconds delay and make a safe zone on a platform on the edges of the map. Punish the players if they don't know how to avoid an attack. Its ok, its supposed to be a challenge and players will learn either from wasting a revive or just from youtube. 

It what makes souls games work and challenging without needing OP gears and bullet sponges. It what makes something like beating a gold lynel in Zelda Botw with a soup ladle fun. Players are actually challenged and acquires muscle memory to defeat a boss.You can go fight a Lynel with a full barbarian set and the best Lynel weapons all you want but it will still rape you if you don't know how to evade and rush attack it.

 

Souls games are the perfect example, because there you can see, that it's not just about having very low reaction times. In PvP games it makes sense to balance reaction times, so they are very short and difficult to react to. In PvE games, you have much more room to play with and can just make dodging attacks pretty easy. If you want to increase the difficulty, you can just add more stuff into the fight, instead of reducing the time to react. That's what you can see a lot in Doom. The individual enemies are pretty easy to deal with, when you are 1 on 1 with them and the difficulty comes from having a lot of them. In Souls specifically it is also very relevant, that you are pretty slow and your own attacks lock you into an animation. So rather than just spamming attacks until you have to react, you have to think whether you have enough time to attack or not.
Having very low reaction time just makes the game very hectic and pushes players towards cheesy methods or to ignore the mechanic.

The orbital strikes in the kela fight could probably have a bit lower shorter reaction time, but not by much. You also have to keep in mind, that the difficulty to react should scale proportional to the amount of damage you take when hit.

Another factor there is, that the effective hp of the characters (hp combined with mitigation) should not drift too far apart. This is a big problem in warframe, where some warframes just die to everything, while others just ignore everything. I would say tankier characters should not have more than ~twice the ehp of a squishy character.

And again, when it comes to floor markers, imo it's just lazy. And that's not just an aesthetic thing. You also don't get to learn what is going on. When you see a boss or enemy in general wind up for an attack animation for the first time, you don't know what's going to happen next. That's very different from having a floor marker. It has nothing to do with how difficult the attack is to dodge, it's just a matter of being willing to spend the extra effort to come up with and implement the proper animations and/or sound cues. The orbital strikes are somewhere in between here. They actually fit into the world, but you also shouldn't overuse them.

[DissentWomble]

I don't really know whats the point of the above reply since it seems like you're agreeing with my point but doesn't really add anything that I think I would comment on so i'll just ignore it. To not sound rude i'll make light replies to some of your comments.

Yes. Like the souls games but scaled to how fluid warframe is. Maybe add an attack pattern that if you're on the floor you loose a life. Players need to either use flying skills or wall run or wall hang for 5 seconds. Give ample visual cue from the boss like having his hands charged up in the air for 3 seconds. Maybe boss uses an explosion discharge move where the boss charges up for 5 seconds where either players hide behind stage props like terminals or Oberon can effect the enemy with his skill 1 radiation and the attack heals instead of damaging the players. Atlas wall skill can be made a prop to avoid the attack, Frost snow Globe built right can stop the attack and protect other players.

The point is to force players to be aware of what the boss is doing and punish players that just use tanks like Inaros or nidus and melee the shiet out of the boss like you do with Wolfie and lvl 5 Lich.

About the floor markers i've explained it once already.

Quote

For that game they need to implement the marked areas because of the time needed to react is short and the consequence is big. That dungeon is for 8 players and each has screen blinding skills that makes it important to have graphic cues like that. Most of the damage is one or 2 hit before dying in that raid stage when its first available to public.

Its not lazy. Its mandatory given how hectic that stage actually is especially with 8 people running and if you're still in exploration stage and you can't see where the damage is coming from, you die and have to rerun the stage again from the start. Its a proper raid. 

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by DissentWomble

[kapn655321]

Meta, "Set Dungeons."
(Only these items allowed: All of which the most used items)
Make missions Specifically catered to the meta, to finally give them the abuse they crave.. without undermining the rest of the game's worth in order to do it.

Edited January 30, 2020 by kapn655321