Quote Originally Posted by Ravenguard View Post
Let me know what you think!
I'm someone who has mentioned a "boss rush" as a good idea a few times before.

Lore-wise it doesn't really require anything as the mechanism for it exists with Deltascape Savage (playback.) But if you want to make it more than just a tacked-on element you pull the main idea used in Ultimate, where the arena changes for each boss without going anywhere.

Every fight would be recorded by the server since they have to be compared to better and worse times. Those with SSD's would clearly be at an advantage over those with regular hard drives, and those with Geforce 1080ti's would be at an even greater advantage than those with any weaker card. So you want to make sure that the time's only tick when the server receives a "ready" command from the clients.

So it would do something like:

"GET READY", first boss skips straight to their opening move. From that point forward a timer ticks down that would list a letter rank. So if you can get a SSS rank that means you got the best score on the server. S/SS/SSS = top 1% of times and for all that matters. A = beat the developers best time. B = Top 10%, C = Top 30%, D/E = middle 30%, bottom 30%, F = Run out of time, or any player KO'd. Title reward given to players who score A or better, minion/mount given to B or better. C/B/A Dynamic rewards change every week (eg materials or non-market consumables.) S/SS/SSS = SE global leaderboard entry and "time to beat" listed on the leaderboard.

If a player KO's, a "reset box" will show up announcing the boss rush failed and will give the option to quit or restart with the same party, which would reset the time.
Parties get three tries, and then the bosh rush is auto-abandoned and can't be attempted again for an hour. Role-enforcement would be in effect so that players can not be carried to get the reward, and can't cheese a result by consumables or not playing a role as intended. Eg, time penalties for using any buff or healing items, any buffs applied before entering would be erased. DPS players would be time penalized for healing themselves or other players, tanks would be time penalized for dropping tank stance or using any healing skills, and healers would be time penalized for using targeted DPS skills, and penalized for healing players already at full health. Boss-rush entry can have a forward declaration of "no rule breaking" which would actually lock out anything that would penalize the player/party.

Some of this idea comes from another game that had it in two forms. The first form was a dungeon-boss rush, which simply removed the dungeon, so you just had three consecutive boss-rooms (since the game only had one boss per difficulty, each boss was harder than the last, but it could be cheesed with cash shop items, and was solo.) The other form was more of a chain of boss-rooms, and yes the party was penalized for all consumables, including reviving players with the latter.

Player KO is kinda of a mixed bag. A player that is KO'd is not contributing, so you'd want the boss rush to auto-fail if a KO happens, but it could also be framed as a time-penalty, so for every second a player is KO'd, the time remaining is reduced by an additional second. Consumable use meanwhile depends on what it does really. A consumable to immediately recover HP/MP or remove a debuff would be a time-penalty. If a party decides that they should cost themselves a few seconds in order to use a buff, then that's their own prerogative.

SE at any point can disqualify a bosh rush time if it's discovered that they have automated/optimized their play by using tools, and thus the SSS time can shift. Players should be able to play back other parties bosh rush scores if they've scored a A/S/SS/SSS rank themselves.