random boss mechanics idea

right now extreme boss battles follow a set routine. i think it will be better if mechanics were random. a boss will have a set attacks but it won't be planned. having them be random will keep players on their feet.

The battle scripts are the way they are so that randomness isn't the sole reason that one run is worse than another. Imagine getting five random instant death mechanics in a row one run, then four the next run, and six the run after that; and six wipes and three parties later, you finally win. Meanwhile, another less geared, less experienced party gets a run with only two instant death mechanics out of their whole seven minute fight and win on the first shot.

I rather not have to deal with RNG in any shape or form in mechanics. T9 is a nifty encounter until you wipe to meteors all the time because the game keeps putting 3 meteors in a row on the same person and their sprint ran out so they can't spread it enough. As it stands, we already face enough RNG because you have the rest of your party/alliance to have to deal with. Just look at Hashmal and his ground AoEs. Will this time be the time they all bait it correctly and we all live, or will I have to jump into the firey half of the arena because I can self-cleanse the bleed so it's actually safer?

You can have some degree of RNG during a raid encounter, but not too much, otherwise it'd be a pain in the butt to balance. For instance, a boss alternating between 2 or 3 skills during certain phases. For instance: Thunderstruck in T9. Single/Double Charge in A10S. Optical Sight in A11S, with only 2 variations at first. Antilights from O4S, which may vary a little during GCO. Even if you know the mechanic, you'll have to pay attention to what's going on or you're ded.

Just make bosses pvp, a player becomes the boss and a party tries to take him down.


Check for example rival wings, if brute justice had 12 more skills it would be an actual boss

I like randomness in fights, but not in the way that mechanics or their timings vary a lot between different tries of the fight. More like... randomly targeted players, random areas of the platform becoming unsafe, random kill order on mobs or mechanics pointing in a random direction. These types of mechanics force you to react during the mechanic or afterwards (all run out of the spawned fire), instead of preparing for them beforehand (place the fire in the assigned corner).

Examples: a persistent dot can jump to the next randomly selected player after it expires, a random player can be targeted for meteor placement to a randomly selected corner, puddles of fire may appear in random and sometimes inconvenient places throughout the fight, adds can be randomly targeted by a short debuff which makes them vulnerable, or 8 stationary adds around the arena can force you to quickly look away from them in a random order.

I'd rather not to a certain extent. I don't want savage runs to be like this "we got bad RNG on x mechanic, let's reset and hope for something better". This is something that should be kept for speed clears, not the actual clearing of content.

I agree with OP. I have been saying this for years. We need more random fights. Some of the current fights are just too scripted for my liking.

This has been a topic talked about since 2.0, but it won't change. When it was mentioned the devs gave us the final boss in Stone Vigil HM who has a random agro table. So the devs clearly didn't understand what the players meant by more random encounters.

But the hard truth to why we won't ever see anything off script is efficiency. Its easier to code a fight that follows a script of timed abilities, its harder and more prone to bugs to develop a legitimate AI that will be more reactive or random with its abilities. In fact think back to every encounter from bosses to random enemies, you'll notice they are almost all on timers. As a tank its noticeable when you pull a group of the same enemies. If they all agro at the same time you'll see all the same attacks go off together in unison. The aevis mobs in stone vigil NM are a prime example of this. If you agro all 3 in a pack at once, you'll get 3 aoes dropped all at once.

The simple truth is the devs either lack the ability to develop mob behavior that isn't "follow the script", or they won't do it because it would take more time and effort and won't fit the copy-paste high throughput schedule they have set up.

Definitely needs more random elements. Make things more interesting generally.

Even cheesy random like 1.2 ifrit hard had.

Random ability used every 4 auto attacks. It might be incinerate. It might be eruptions it might be plumes you just never knew which would be next.

Where the are version you knew exactly which was next and even the exact pattern things like plumes would appear in.

Kinda boring...

Would make boss fights more engaging but I think would require considerably more script programming.

Even if we set the boss on a system where each special skill or attack has its own individual CD to prevent certain ones from being over spammed while also being linked to a short GCD to make sure it doesn't instantly set off 3-4 skills all at the same time. Then add HP or battle time trigger specials and possibly an enrage where it basically pushes all the buttons. Granted with a more randomized attack setup they could atleast do away with the timed enrage on encounters.

I would love to have some actual mechanics as opposed to just dodging.

The process of learn will be harder, but also the difficulty will be based on luck. If you have luck, and the boss doesn't use often a specific wipe mechanic, you're good, but you have also de possibility of have just the opposite, the boss spamming that skills. Random mechanics cannot work in a game of this type. Even on turn base Final Fantasy games, the bosses are scripted in majority. Full random things are uncontrollable, hard to balances and the success is heavily based on luck.

Think on a simple mechanic as Emptiness of V4 Savage. If I remember well, it have 64 possible combinations, some of them are very tricky and can cause a wipe, but others are so simple that you don't need to even move. No think in all like this for an entire fight.

A lot of people complains about how predictable are the battle once you learn it, but it is the way this game works. Random things are ok in low quantity, such as V3 Halicarnassus four jump variants (Blue tile, Library, brambles and clock), which uses randomly. Yes, it is random, but still, you know they will use one of this four in a specific moment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zarabeth

I would love to have some actual mechanics as opposed to just dodging.

---

Just curious what do you call an actual mechanic?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AxlStream

Just curious what do you call an actual mechanic?

---

Clearly, a person you pay to fix your car.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AxlStream

Just curious what do you call an actual mechanic?

---

An interesting/unusual mechanic, and my favorite in the whole game, is the Gremlin mob family's ability to debuff someone with "Misery", which a party member can then cleanse with the /comfort emote (but not with Esuna-type abilities).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

An interesting/unusual mechanic, and my favorite in the whole game, is the Gremlin mob family's ability to debuff someone with "Misery", which a party member can then cleanse with the /comfort emote (but not with Esuna-type abilities).

---

Please, elaborate. The Misery debuff thing is more of an easter egg imo.

The recuring thing I see is people complaining about fights being with boring mechanics but nobody with ideas for some fresh ones? Also we got some new ones for Deltascape savage as well!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AxlStream

Please, elaborate. The Misery debuff thing is more of an easter egg imo.

The recuring thing I see is people complaining about fights being with boring mechanics but nobody with ideas for some fresh ones? Also we got some new ones for Deltascape savage as well!

---

Well to more what the OP is asking is for boss battles that aren't essentially choreographed meaning the boss doesn't have a set order of skill usage making it to the point players can clear the battle without paying attention because its all just muscle memory.

What about some fights focused around healers? No mechanics to dodge, just automatically hits players. Straight up tank and spank with healers working to keep everyone up. I miss fights like that from old MMOs.