Boss Monsters

[Bear]

Well, if you think of it logicaly, the world isnt fair to everyone >.>
No matter how you think of it, its always unfair to some.

They miss a boss spawn? too bad

[degen]

umm ... perhaps its just me thinking but define a boss before deciding a matter of fighting him, i would recommend a story for say ... 8 sinister beings /demons and to fight one of them you gather relics in their "area" in which they are affecting the world.

Say Tulimshar has a Fire sinister demon (the toughest boss in Tulimshar realm) to reach him you start out to ... say 5 dungeons to gather these relics (5 of em)

After gathering the relics you go to his "altar" a dungeon perhaps in which you must travel to the deepest part (a very hard thing to do) and open a gate to his plane and fight him ...

this way anyone can go and fight him ... yet doing so will take time and effort you cant camp him sicne you must get the relics again to open the gate

To even make it harder to camp a boss you can add a system like the portal to their realm is only open one week named after the color of that weeks moon ... and one portal is open every week but they rotate depending on the color of the moon, for that a NPC could be implied a Mystic or something that says "This week the moon is bathing in fire" and so its the Fire demons week

Fire demon - Blazing Moon (lasts one week)
Ice Demon - Freezing Moon (same as above)
etc etc

for "mini-bosses" i would asume there is a story behind them, like Firedog of (name of Fire demon) or some such and those monsters could have different rooms to spawn in (decided spawn places which is randomly decided) like every dungeon has 4 corners in one of those corners they spawn ... and if you also add a spawn rate of 1 hour the adventuring groups must travel the dungeon from corner to corner to first find adn then try to defeat.

It is also a nice thing to add that when a boss of greater importance has been defeated a realm notification is spread in teh cities, like a trophy from the adventurers (as World of Warcraft has with the dragons, Onyxia's and Ragnaros heads are put on stakes to show the people that they have been slain) perhaps the Horns of a demons....

Well either way this is alot based on Story line Bosses and that they are in some way related to Astral planar (which can explain why only one group is at the boss, since they ventured there thro the portal together)

For other bossess perhaps having them flee and leave treasure chests is one way to keep them alive without respawn or summoned back to their "masters of Immortality" to then later reappear in another region...
This way you can have them respawn with their "army"/guards in any abandon camp that is spread around the realms from teh battles between the Gods and mages...

I strongly recommend that you first decide in what way TMW is to lean towards, a fully Community (more RP) mmorpg cannot have the same competion like a PvP oriented game ... since then that would be a game of perfection and remakes and .. i cant imagine how many hours of freakish slavery that is behind that game either ^^

*sighs deeply* and yet again i have proven my bastardness in typing way to long comments -_- well if you have the time and patience to read through this post without fallign asleep i think you might have seen more options in creating bossess.

*short said, some specific Awesome bosses should be group only experience (no one else can interfere) yet alot of other bosses (mini bosses, half boss (like a captain or somethin)) could be a more competetive between gamers for finding and slaying or so i believe

[Crush]

i like the idea of bosses that are unlockable by quests.

the idea of a "boss ticket", may it be a key to its lair, some artefact to summon it, having to solve a puzzle to get to it (maybe one that needs cooperation of multiple players) or whatever, sounds like a good idea. it would be a good method to limit boss encounters without encouraging spawn camping and is a good way to get some quests that are more interesting and plausible than "bring me 10 rat tails" grind quests.

i would recommend to make sure that bosses that are meant to be fought by multiple people at once can only be unlocked by so many people cooperating. that would avoid the frustration when you as a single player complete the whole boss quest just to get killed by the boss in seconds.

the quests should maybe be shortened a bit when doing them a 2nd time. otherwise those quests will become very annoying when doing them more than once.

[Rotonen]

Instanced dungeons are a good concept, proven by World of Warcraft. Taking the idea one step further with dynamically changing dungeons (randomly generated maps, quests and content based on the state of the world in general) would at least in my vision be our challenge.

[Modanung]

I still prefer the boss-room the way I discribed it.
The strength of the boss should be calculated according to the number of players joining the fight. That way you can take in on your own or in a team, but it should be about just as hard to defeat it. Also there should be an infinite number of paralel boss-rooms so players don't have to wait for the bossfight to be over.
This method allows any player to combat the boss only once, so no exp. pumping and no other-player-bugging.

Rotonen... I like randomized areas too, but we would need a "You enter a maze of downward stairs"-like solution.
Which is ok I guess.

[Crush]

instancing is the death of the mmorpg idea. the feature that defines Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs is that you interact with hundreds or thousands of strangers all the time and share the virtual world with them. you play mmorpgs to have the element of surprise to be able to meet and interact with people everywhere. when you just want to play with your friends in your own private dungeon without anyone else to bother you, you can start your favorite single player RPG with multiplayer mode (like diablo) and invite your buddies to an internet game.

and i still don't understand why you insist on the restriction that every player can only fight each boss once.

[Modanung]

Because it's a BOSS... It's a guy that prefents you from venturing further... it's a guy that gives you quite some rewards when he's defeated, like lots of exp and good items. He's part of a (main)quest and you don't want to have other players mess with your quests by beating up your target.

You can still take on the boss with people you just met. MMORPGs aren't about taking on a single creature with all available players together. They are about a vast world in which you can meet a seemingly near-to endless number of new people with whom you may fight or work together... or you can just walk by them and maybe admire their nifty outfit or noble steed. People don't want to have a higher level player to walk by their boss-fight and killing it in a single blow.
Special and hard encounters that are more suitable for an open-to-all fight are creature swarms. Like the Kitin attacks in Saga of Ryzom and the snake event we've had in TMW. A rather large army of mini-bosses that most players can't take on their own.

Randomising dungeons is something that adds to the hugeness of the virtual world. If you want an enormous amount of different dungeons in another way players would either be forced to walk hundreds of miles to get to their personally selected dungeon or their should be a dungeon entrance every 2 tiles. If you don't have a huge amount of different dungeons... well, it gets boring venturing the same dungeons over and over again.
I'm not saying all dungeons should be randomised. Ofcourse there should also be dungeons that are not randomised, which all players can freely walk in and out and meet eachother in.

[Master Ar2ro]

and i still don't understand why you insist on the restriction that every player can only fight each boss once.

I have a very short reply for that question: Diablo2@Battle.net
What's the pleasure in the game, when all you need to do is get someone to give you a taxi up to Baal himself, and then just standing by watching strong players fight Baal and his monsters, while you get exp... getting to levels of 60-70 in a few days... what's the fun? What's the challenge of such a game?
I know diablo2 is not a mmorpg, but still I consider it a good example. I would vote for limiting the bosses to one-time per player. Perhaps make it so, that when a player fought with that boss already, he can't hit nor be hit by him anymore. So parties of players who fought and who didn't could continue to play on... thought that might be an expensive solutions for a big number of players...

But I agree with Crush that instancing is not good. If I want a game only for myself and friends I'll simply download and set up my own server. Althought there might be problems like too many players in a world, causing the boss being constantly fought, and thus... there might be a large group of players who have to wait to be able to kill the boss, and additionaly too many players mean that lootstealing will be very intensive. I know it's hard to come with a good compromise between the two, but I think that it is the time for thinking about it...

In terms of randomly generated dungeons I agree with what Modanung said.

[Crush]

so your arguments why boss monsters should only be killable once for every player are:

1. avoid easy exp points for low level characters by high level characters killing bosses for them
2. avoid overcrowded boss monsters
3. you want to uses bosses as obstacles while advancing in the game and it would be illogical and annoying to face such an obstacle more than once.


your first argument is quite nonsensical, because we won't use a level and exp point based system with the new server. the new system will be a learning by doing system. it isn't determined yet how this system will deal with parties and if the system can be abused to train weak characters without much effort. and if it will be abuseable in that way it isn't determined either if it would even be effective to kill bosses to do so. maybe grinding normal monsters will be more effective. we can't say before the system is finished.

boss monsters becoming overcrowded is indeed a problem in many mmorpgs. the use of a "boss ticket" system like proposed by degen that limits the frequency of boss fights by forcing the players to make some preparations each time they want to face a boss could limit the problem but can't remove it completely. the idea of instancing the boss fights (and only the boss fights) is maybe not that bad after all.

your argument that boss fights should only be a one time experience because they are obstacles during advancing in the game seems to be based on the plan to divide the whole game world into closed areas made for specific level ranges and to use boss fights to "test" characters if they are strong enough for the next area. you obviously want to send the players in a linear order through all areas in the game. such linear storylines are common in classical single player RPGs but are very uncommon in modern multiplayer RPGs. almost all online rpgs (and many single player rpgs nowadays) allow the player to go anywhere at anytime and explore the whole world without restrictions. of course there are areas where weak characters have trouble to survive but theoretically they have the freedom to go there when they want. in my opinion the concept of a game world in which everyone can move freely and where everyone can decide for hinself what to do when is much better than forcing each player on the same predetermined path.


so here are my arguments against one time boss fights:

1. Fighting bosses multiple times is a good concept, proven by World of Warcraft. (when Rotonen may use that killphrase to support instancing i may use it to support boss fights).
2. when a character has slain all the bosses there is no challenge for him left. he can't challenge a boss again, maybe with a smaller party or even alone or (when he really wants to show off) fighting with bare hands or handicaped some other way. one time boss fights would be a big limitation for strong characters.
3. as said boss monsters will drop very valuable items. when a player wants a specific item from a specific boss but the boss doesn't drop it the first time or he can't pick it up for some reason he will never again get the chance to optain the item (on the other hand this would maybe encourage ingame trading)
4. when guilds or other organisations want to do something together a boss raid is a very popular activity in most mmorpgs. but when every boss can only be fought once by every player it will be very difficult to find a boss that everyone who wants to participate in the event hasn't killed yet.


so i would suggest the following compromise:
-boss fights are instanced
-bosses aren't obstacles while advancing in the game like in old rpgs but side challenges that can be accepted or ignored by everyone as he or she pleases like they are in other mmorpgs.
-bosses are fightable unlimited times
-everytime a party wants to fight a boss it has to solve some kind of quest or similar to prevent excessive boss monster farming

[Master Ar2ro]

your first argument is quite nonsensical, because we won't use a level and exp point based system with the new server. the new system will be a learning by doing system. it isn't determined yet how this system will deal with parties and if the system can be abused to train weak characters without much effort. and if it will be abuseable in that way it isn't determined either if it would even be effective to kill bosses to do so. maybe grinding normal monsters will be more effective. we can't say before the system is finished.

Simply because the system is not ready yet, and that it is not yet known if it can be abused is not a reason to think that it will not be a problem. As long as it is not proven that it cannot be used in a similar way, I think that this argument should not be simply thrown away. When the system is fully designed and operating, then you can say wether or not to discard this.

[Modanung]

The fact we will not use a traditional exp/lvl system doesn't mean big bosses are more charecter-stat rewarding then ordinary monsters. If experience in a certain field increases according to the time spent on utilising it... like swordfighting... you might just as well fight maggots for hours as big bosses. I mean hard monsters will reward character development, nomatter if it is thru a traditional exp system or not.