Thread: 3.5 months... 4 months... 4.5 months... 5 months...

Originally Posted by Ath192

At the same time they are working on the netcode and revamping the graphics. Those are huge core items. The netcode did break a lot of things for sure, but if it leads to improvements down the line it will be a huge gain. Previously they wouldn't even touch those things. So I can see they are doing a bit more than usual and because they are doing so, issues are going to happen.

Things don't break when people dont change them, but if anything thats an argument encouraging them to leave stuff as is instead of trying.

All that being said the content droughts are hitting pretty hard imo.

That's the thing with guaranteed drops. Content ends faster. That's one reason why stuff in older MMOs lasted so long. It took months/years to obtain gear. Not because the content was particularly difficult or long lived, but because you had fractions of a percent chance to get the item you wanted. Sure, not having increased ilvls every other patch helps make that a possibility, since no one in their right mind would spend months grinding an item that's obsolete the next day because a new patch just dropped, but I never enjoyed the old MMO rng style of things, and I played Lineage II over XI lol.

Originally Posted by Ath192

Maybe but there's things that can be done to provide new experiences better. For example POTD and HOH were poorly executed. Even though its procedurally generated its just super samey and boring. Imagine procedurally generated areas that have diverse terrains and rooms.

They could easily do entire forests, deserts, and oceans/archipelagos on a ship that always look vastly different for deep dungeon exploration style experiences. But instead they are just barely distinguishable rooms with random mobs.

Like, replayability value doesn't always have to be tied down to a reward for doing the exact same thing over and over. Older MMO's didnt have access to this tech, so thats why they did it, but its 2023, and plenty of examples of this stuff exists.

Edit: Bosses can stand to be a bit more random, with a pool of a lot of mechanics that may or may not be executed in that instance. It just doesn't always have to be the same thing.

I would take extreme bosses with 25 mechanics, out of which only 12 are executed per instance, and reducing the totems to 50 from 100, that would be more fun, more replayable, than what exists right now for example. Same with Savage, with the cap being removed alltogether because obviously its going to be way harder. Instead of this running wheel we spin on to get our weeks worth.

We already see with current content that people hate certain patterns of mechanics. P8s p1 people will wipe until they get snake first. This would just be a nightmare with random mechanics that can have bad orders. "wipe until we get the easiest set to deal with"



Random mechanics and such are great.... Once.... After that it turns into "ugh, the shit set of mechanics, let's just try again"

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

We already see with current content that people hate certain patterns of mechanics. P8s p1 people will wipe until they get snake first. This would just be a nightmare with random mechanics that can have bad orders. "wipe until we get the easiest set to deal with"



Random mechanics and such are great.... Once.... After that it turns into "ugh, the shit set of mechanics, let's just try again"

I still hate P8S p1. My group always got leg day (doggo) first, on every clear. Our parses are pretty trash because of it, and it got to the point where we became used to how we had to do things for leg day. Arm day (snakes) first was always a fever dream that always threw us off when we achieved it. We just got leg day first THAT much, with almost 90% of our pulls in prog leading to it.

Originally Posted by Ath192

no because with enough random mechanics groups will have to go through it. They won't wipe 10 hours to get the specific set of mechanics that have a 1 in 100 possibilities of happening. This is only a problem when a boss has a very high chance of repeating the same mechanic over and over. Like a 50% chance, in case of P8S.

Theres no way with 200 combinations that groups will stand there waiting for the preferred one.

I mean if you like the static, unvarying fights to be repeated over and over again with no change thats a fair take, I just don't find that good for replayability value imo.


Like, the only reason that mentality exists is because the game is so static that parsing is the thing people do on fights. But honestly, a game can be made interesting to the point where parsing isn't really what matters, its the content and fun of the fight. Not just your ability to compete and look down on others. And the hardcore parses will still go at it for sure.

Even in games where fights aren't fully scripted bosses still use a lot of the same actions. Take souls games for instance. Once you fight a boss once, you tend to know all his mechanics.



It's not really feasible to make every boss have 25ish random mechanics you have to go through. That would be hell to test for one, and if there are combinations that make the fight impossible to clear that'd be even worse.

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Even in games where fights aren't fully scripted bosses still use a lot of the same actions. Take souls games for instance. Once you fight a boss once, you tend to know all his mechanics.



It's not really feasible to make every boss have 25ish random mechanics you have to go through. That would be hell to test for one, and if there are combinations that make the fight impossible to clear that'd be even worse.

I see your point but to me it’s perfectly feasible. All they have to do is individually test them and make sure they are all clearable on their own without requiring unique cooldowns, but cheeseable by them. Kind of like they do now. Where you don’t have to invuln but you could. Then after that take into consideration any downtime they might incur and subtract that from the dps check.

If they are all verified there wouldn’t be a reason to doubt the fight would run into an unclearable combo. And they wouldn’t have to run the fight in all its permutations.

25 is also a random number right, it could be way less, but enough so that the fight is always keeping you on your toes.