Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Dzian]

The game had a fair number of uniquely shaped boss arenas with varied terrain. In fact the game's most difficult fight on release was set on the palm of a gigantic dragon's hand. These irregular arenas while cool had their fair share of problems; things like ranged classes being able to avoid a mechanic because they could stand on top of a pile of sand and players failing to dodge a fight's mechanics because the irregular terrain prevented them from moving away fast enough. From the second update cycle and on the designers ended up changing to flat arenas to prevent these problems.

As someone else pointed out the problem here isn't really one of arena design but more down to the lack of a proper Z-Axis tied to mechanics. It's a problem visible in pretty much every area of the game. Even in places like aurum vale where you can jump over poison puddles and still get the debuff. or you can be 30-40ft in the air and still get hit by a wolfs bites.

a proper working Z axis would make for very interesting possibilities within encounter designs arenas where you could stand on rocks to avoid floods or hide behind them to avoid gusts or fireballs. or even just have varying ledges that allow for different approaches. down low to smasha bosses legs. up higher to crack his skull.... a decent Z-Axis would open up many options

[Ultimatecalibur]

No, it doesn't. It would make no difference except that the dps check would now arrive anywhere between some 7 and 10 minutes based on how sparingly your healers used MP. Healers afking between damage intake would be not only viable but often required. (And I've no idea what to say to you if you could possibly think that a system which requires you to spend significant time doing nothing or almost only ever using the most modest and MP-efficient mini-heals is somehow a good thing.)

I wouldn't say it would force healer AFKing. It would more force them to get more piety so that they can cast longer combined with Tanks getting more Tenacity so that they can take less damage and have better heals. It might also make tanks focus on using their protect other and protect party abilities more.

As someone else pointed out the problem here isn't really one of arena design but more down to the lack of a proper Z-Axis tied to mechanics. It's a problem visible in pretty much every area of the game. Even in places like aurum vale where you can jump over poison puddles and still get the debuff. or you can be 30-40ft in the air and still get hit by a wolfs bites.

a proper working Z axis would make for very interesting possibilities within encounter designs arenas where you could stand on rocks to avoid floods or hide behind them to avoid gusts or fireballs. or even just have varying ledges that allow for different approaches. down low to smasha bosses legs. up higher to crack his skull.... a decent Z-Axis would open up many options

This isn't a Z-axis problem. In both cases Z-axis was functioning. The AoEs were actually Spheres not cylinders and people knew that they could dodge certain AoEs because they were outside the AoE sphere. One of the ways they fixed this was by switching to cylinder shaped AoEs which reach to the top of the zone. This actually led to a few cases in places such as Syrcus Tower where you could be hit by AoEs from the bosses above you.