Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[KaldeaSahaline]

Oh, damn it. I typed that on mobile. Yeah, it's a typo on my end. That contradicts my original post badly. But no, I'm not asking for 4mans to have Savage-level difficulty.

****ing Mobile man. Rookie mistake. I kid. We're all good then.

The "latter" referred to the second possible role of a mechanic, to create a point of decision, rather than signalling the start or end of a period enforcing uptime/movement.

Ah ok - I didn't see that in the text. That's why I was confused.

My haste then has a lot to do with the ambiguity, but it would also help if you could pick a few current Savage fight from which you'd like for me to try to create 4-man designs so I could work towards a concrete goal when crafting the example encounter.

How about Alte Roite (O1S) and Guardian (O7S)?

I've no idea what the snatched player will be doing; it didn't seem relevant to the idea of what must be adjusted or permitted to allow a light party to deal with party size reduction when each member accounts for 25% of the party (and potentially the whole of the given role) down from 12.5% (and half of said role).

It's relevant because I'm trying to measure engagement (notably tank/healer since they're isolated in 4 man). If a mechanic removes 25% of the party. It directly impacts what they're during during this mechanic. It then also directly impacts what can happen during this forced downtime.

If something just removes you for x seconds, that's not fun for the player. Sitting there isn't enjoyable or challenging, even if it was punishment for a failed mechanic.

I'd assume surviving some manner of role-adapted mini-encounter, killing... a role-adapted ghost(?), or the like.

In that example, the encounter, mostly as similar. Let's say for instance that TBs, severe raid damage, and DPS checks occur at predictable intervals, as does the chance of getting the player-loss mechanic, such that the light party must decide who they can do without for the upcoming mechanic. If the separation is meant to be purely a punishment, rather than a decision, then that changes things a bit.

Impact changes only by nature of what's coming up; it's on the party to mitigate that impact by choice or through perfect mechanical execution (again, depending on if it's a decision or punishment).

You then mention that the party must decide which of the 4 it can do without. I.e. if big raidwide damage is incoming -> need healer, can lose someone else. If TB is upcoming, need tank, can lose DPS, if DPS check is incoming, can lose healer/tank.

That's extremely binary, more so than existing design. Which is my exact fear and why I don't think 4 man savage level is a good idea (without sweeping changes).

If the player snatch mechanic occurs predictably alongside other mechanics, doesn't it stand to reason that it's likely to either be too punishing (i.e. unable to survive/complete follow up mechanics) due to lack of bodies, or it's trivial. How do you handle it within the existing design constraints?

For example - if healer gets grabbed - how much eHP does the tank take while the healer is trapped? 20%? 50%? 120%? How about the rest of the party?

What ends up happening (I think) is that the healer failed the mechanic and people weren't healed enough to survive while they're gone -> wipe. If the healer did, comes out, they have x amount of seconds to top the party up. Easy.

DPS don't have defensives so you can't do more than 100% eHP. That's what I mean it's usually either trivial, or too punishing. There's not much room for dynamic design with existing toolkits, especially with only 4 players.

I'm struggling with that piece with respect to 4 man savage level content.

[*]Which is why it's important that the boss damage be modified to split-damage (e.g. with minor flat defense and max HP down or the like), at which point positioning is enough to make up for a lack of tools.

Again, if its split damage, that's far from a matter of "low enough that..." The initial or maximum eHP of two melee (or two melee and a Surecast healer at that) on average is higher than a tank outside of popped CDs. The issue is their sustainability -- especially if, say, naturally more affected by a given debuff than a tank would be. It needn't change the damage dealt from the strong initial levels at all, only HOW it is dealt.

I need practical examples of this 'split damage' idea you keep mentioning. I don't understand it. If tank is eaten, how does it deal split damage? Current design handles that with stack markers. How are you proposing it happen?

Do you simply mean that a boss's auto attacks are all passive cleaves in that anyone in front splits the damage (a la Rav EX Blinding Blade TB?). If so - then are you proposing this as a shared design element across all content forms, or strictly this '4 man savage' iteration? Speaking plainly - I think undermechanics like that are bad design UNLESS they're consistent. I am not opposed to the concept at all though.

The current example I'm thinking of is the one with the Minotaur and the "bait" from The Fractal Continuum. One of the other players, eg the healer, would activate this, to interrupt an AOE with heavy damage, where the Minotaur goes after the bait add, and if it successfully eats it, recovers HP.

Re-apply this to a different scenario where the healer is 'gaol'-ed and if the tank goes to free the healer, the boss instead eats the healer if brought close (which is a mechanic like the meteors in T9, combined with the The Lost City of Amdapor when a player is "eaten", and if not freed, immediately ko'd mechanic) and recovers significant HP.

Good examples. I think I understand your POV. However, these examples are very binary, which is what I am afraid savage 4 man content will look like. There's no choice. It's simply do the mechanic this one way or else. This isn't an issue with your ideas, but the core design of the game, which is only managed moderately well in larger party sizes due to mechanical overlap/dynamic gameplay.

However the other type of fight I was thinking of was one where the healer is simply removed from the fight during phase 2 (eg boss at 60%) and has to do something like "heal a npc (like the magic pot)" to free themselves, that they are otherwise taking AOE damage in a separate room while the weaker DPS is paired with a weaker mini boss in a walled off arena, the stronger DPS is paired with a stronger miniboss in a walled off arena, and the tank keeps the main boss busy (but can do extra damage during this phase by dropping tank stance.)

Looking at this in a vacuum - this sounds ridiculously boring and how would the game identify which dps is weaker/stronger? Killing a random mob with no real mechanics or effects or simply dodging telegraphs while executing your ST rotation isn't engaging on its own, CERTAINLY not for a tank

If the DPS fail their mechanics, then they are not available to be raised, as they are not returned to the main arena until the boss's HP is 50%. So the penalty to failing the dps requirement is that the DPS is not available to help speed up the fight. If the healer fails their mechanic (eg if the healable target dies, they're locked in the room until the main boss hits 50%. They can also die by not healing themselves and still not get returned to the main arena until the main boss is 50%.) At 50%, the boss "summons" all the players back into the arena if they're not there, and switches to a "pads!" type of mechanic that requires all 4 players to stand somewhere to toggle a shield, and if players are KO'd from failing their mechanics, then this mechanic fails, and whoever is remaining takes heavy damage going into phase three of the fight, potentially failing it here. If the tank manages to get the boss from 60% to 50% before the DPS kill their mini-bosses, then the mini-bosses are also pulled to the main arena, potentially knocking them off the "pads!" mechanic.

This still suffers from binary gameplay though. Which sure, works, but it wouldn't be engaging (especially for a tank), which is where I think most of the problems lie. It's that tanks and healers by themselves aren't robust enough without the overlap of mechanics that a larger party size adds.