Boss encounters from other MMOs

[Starkbeaumont]

Hey

One of our tank-only players quit the game recently. He was very deep into WoW before. And apparently FFXIV wasn't what he was looking for cause of boring fight mechanics to name one of his biggest issues.
Also looking at the many threads ranging from "game is too easy" to "can't dodge shit, too many one-shot scenarios" and in anticipation of the new coil turns I'm curious to know what the other big games in the genre did to make the boss encounters tough?

Obvious stuff like DPS-checks and enrage timers are in almost every game I guess and need not to be mentioned. Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden might stay outside as well :-)

Thanks in advance.

[Ryuko]

I find the hard/extreme fight mechanics to be very fun, but unfortunately I think they are just a tad TOO scripted. Some element of surprise is nice. Ifrit Extreme in 1.0 was a fun fight... there were some predictable and unpredictable moves he had... the only downside was the lag, of course.

The only thing I have noticed about WoW raids is that the boss fights have more 'personality'... and by that I mean the enemies say more. In FFXIV, even though many of the enemies have a little speech bubble and say 'something' during important moments of the fight, they don't actually speak or address the party directly. I think the game is taking a good direction as far as 'extreme' modes go... but again, too scripted. It's okay to have some scripted battles, some chaotic battles, and some in between battles... but there is a piece of me that thinks all of the scripted battles are there to make up for the inevitable lag many players experience.

[Lumiin]

Aion isn't a "big" game but my favorite boss fight from there is Bakarama cause he turns you into a chicken >.>

[Zaft]

Hard mode Mimiron was one of my favorite fights.

[Muzy]

Hard mode Mimiron was one of my favorite fights.

Hell yes! Also 1 and 0 light Yogg, oh man those were fun.

[Wizhard]

Hard mode Mimiron was one of my favorite fights.

"Now why would you go and do something like that?!" OH GOD FIRE EVERYWHERE.
Mimiron's quotes and music is what made it memorable for me. The closest thing here is probably Titans music changing as the phases change. Really wish they did it for more bosses.

[Zfz]

Not even hard mode mimiron, I loved tanking the pre-nerf normal mode mimiron. Well some would say pre-fix mimiron.

The combination of missle, land mines and sweeping cannon in randomness was what I loved about it. Then they "fixed" it so that certain things can't happen at the same time, and it just went dull...

[Shakarlyn]

EverQuest also had some very involved raids. I very much enjoyed raiding there. Various mechanics have been used there. In the last expansion, there was a raid where you had to play "who done it" to figure out which player in your raid is the Murder. You get a wave of mobs and you kill them one by one for clues. It was a huge pain because you had to try and guess what player it was based on the clues, they have to confess and then the encounter starts. If you guess incorrectly, have to start the entire thing all over again. It was based on where the character was 'born', what god they followed, maybe what's on their keyring, how many days played. You only had so many chances before the raid forced you to pick someone.


There was an encounter called Sendaii, the Hive Queen who was a major pain because of all the waves of adds. You think a majority of it is up front, but it isn't, you get 40'ish adds at the last 25% of her health were previous waves was only 12. Nevermind that the mobs in these waves could lock you down. AE/curses and such mechanics were involved.

There was a final encounter in another expansion later on, named Overlord Mata Muram. Very few guilds across all servers cleared him when the content was current. Neato encounter, hellishly hard back then.

I could probably go on forever about weird and maddening mechanics like encounters that can only be damaged with special weapons farmed or gathered during the raid itself, mechanics like allagan rot but involving 54 people and yes, that 1 person still kills the raid

[Ashira]

The only thing letting down XIV boss encounters is how tightly scripted they all are. You know which ability follows the last and what they're going to do next, and they rarely deviate. If you've done something once, you can do it a million times.

I really dislike RNG, but I feel it has a place in these encounters. If Titan had Rock Buster, Landslide, Gaol, Weight of the Land, Mountain Buster and random bomb patterns, but used them as he pleased.. I'd absolutely love that encounter! Just make it so that Mountain Buster or Gaol couldn't be used twice within a short period of time.

[Nezerius]

If Titan had Rock Buster, Landslide, Gaol, Weight of the Land, Mountain Buster and random bomb patterns, but used them as he pleased.. I'd absolutely love that encounter! Just make it so that Mountain Buster or Gaol couldn't be used twice within a short period of time.

Hell no, unless Weight of the Land gets a cast time increase of at least 0,5 seconds.
It's already a pain to avoid Weights at 100+ ms, when you can anticipate when they're coming. Have this cast randomly, and those people will get screwed over.
Not to mention that you'd never be sure when he'll use double Weights, or the possibility of getting super bombs during egi's (on Extreme)

I'd be all for bosses that are more random in using their abilities, but Titan isn't one of 'em.