[Feedback Request] Cyclops Combat Preview Shown in May Livestream

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Gonna rewatch the showcase in a few hours, so will double check.

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Diamaht to share the quoted post.

Gonna rewatch the showcase in a few hours, so will double check.

That is indeed what was said.

So for those who don't have context but want to note anything.

Levels 22-35 (presumably lower levels means you need more people since the boss is basically two back to back DPS checks) and 16-32 people.

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Was it mechanically for players though? All they needed to do was just dps. And clearics would heal a bit after a boss ability here and there. Yes, boss had a few additional mechanics (that I mentioned), but it didn't change anything on player side.

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This was just the video I could find of this boss, cause L2's too old to have a ton of different videos of older content.

This boss is required for a very important quest, so you'd have a ton of pvp on it. Also, the players in that video are at the top of their progression and are the best players in their class on their server (their weapons are unique and serve as an indicator), so to them this boss is trivial. For a progress-appropriate party it's a bit harder and sometimes you can even die, because you don't have enough dps and the boss just cancels your party's buffs and you're fucked.

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Forgive my vitriol but isn't that the point? What's the real difference here?

Making more players do the same simplistic stuff isn't what passes for good design these days, is it?

The entire reason I can't have a reaction to this is that you could give me this exact thing as a single, 6-8 man enemy and it'd be largely the same. It doesn't leverage basically any of the things that make a Raid boss 'Raid Tier', which is fine if it is supposed to be super simple, but then it's super simple.

I know maybe we're at the point where 'this game is not for me', but are my group and I really so far removed from MMO gameplay that we just can't grasp at all what is important to people anymore? This was so relatively lame that I don't know where to even start, so I don't know what you're seeing and should probably rewatch it too, but like, couldn't you put all those things on just basic mobs? Is the MMO community so changed that they can't see that this is just an inflated Alpha-1 Troll with a healing mechanic that's basically a DPS check?

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Yeah, as I said, the boss would be fine if it's meant to be background for pvp, but at that point I'd prefer if Intrepid told us as much.

So this might be the biggest point of feedback for future raid/pve showcases. State clearly what the thing being shown is supposed to be or at least planned to be. Maybe I missed it during the stream, but I feel like I didn't get an indication of whether this boss was supposed to be super simple or whether it's meant to be challenging.

Right now, even with pvp, this boss would obviously not represent the kind of content that "only <10% of people would be able to clear". So I'd assume that we'll see a much more complex and difficulty boss later on. And if that's the case - I believe it should be stated as so or at least be a part of the preface that Steven loves to do.

NiKr wrote: »

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Yeah, as I said, the boss would be fine if it's meant to be background for pvp, but at that point I'd prefer if Intrepid told us as much.

So this might be the biggest point of feedback for future raid/pve showcases. State clearly what the thing being shown is supposed to be or at least planned to be. Maybe I missed it during the stream, but I feel like I didn't get an indication of whether this boss was supposed to be super simple or whether it's meant to be challenging.

Right now, even with pvp, this boss would obviously not represent the kind of content that "only <10% of people would be able to clear". So I'd assume that we'll see a much more complex and difficulty boss later on. And if that's the case - I believe it should be stated as so or at least be a part of the preface that Steven loves to do.

That wouldn't have been the point though. This isn't even...

Ugh I don't even know where to start because everything about the entire discussion is so wrong...

Like... There are so many 'concept checks' this would have had to pass to get onto a stream, for me. But to start with the simplest one, and to keep it out of the feedback thread since that seems to be going well for Intrepid...

If you give me a 'raid boss' where I need 32 players...

And the job of all the Mages is to DPS with their wands and lightning.
And the job of the two Tanks (assuming we even have two) is to stand there.
And the job of the 4 Bards is to buff their party with basically the same buffs.
And the job of the 4 Clerics is to heal the AoE damage and keep the Tanks up...

You gave me an inflated 8 man fight.

You didn't use the 'Raid Boss' aspects at all. You didn't do any of the absolute basic design (that fits perfectly into PvX games mind you) that would make it a group challenge. You do have to make hard mechanics, because if you don't, what was your excuse for not making it just an 8 man fight at that point? Is it just another feel-good participation open-world spectacle?

Or a PvP objective that is meant to be minimally interactive like so many other games of this type? You could have done that as 8-man too. It'd be more fun then!

What even IS this?

Azherae wrote: »

Or a PvP objective that is meant to be minimally interactive like so many other games of this type? You could have done that as 8-man too. It'd be more fun then!

What even IS this?

I agree and I thought of another point of feedback related to this.

Intrepid should try to show how they foresee the gameplay playing out. If this boss is meant to be contested in pvp - do that. Tune the boss a bit down, but instead of having 2 groups on the boss, have one on him and another one flagging against the farmers.

This would not only show all the instanced kids how these fights would truly go, but the boss difficulty would be at least put in some context. Though yes, I agree that the current design definitely feels like more of a single party kind of deal. Which is kinda the reason why I used that first video as an example.

The only reason why people in L2 would need more than one party to clear Golkonda was because they didn't have enough dps to outpace his cancel. In AoC's case it seems to be "to outpace his healing". Though if we consider that proper full parties would have a much better dps output - this boss would be a single party deal even if it was truly meant for several parties, just as you say.

Ok, I rewatched the boss fight and one of the devs did say that this was a simple boss that was meant to just showcase the interaction of big creatures with their environment.

Now, while I do appreciate that this was stated in the showcase, I do think that it should've been reiterated in the preface. Cause, as much of a joke as they've become, it's way easier to pay attention to their details than the info that's being said while you're trying to parse several visual things on your screen.

But this being a simple boss, I do still stick to my feedback of "show us the pvx, if you show us the easier pve". I think that'll be my main piece of feedback for this stream and for any future non-hardcore pve showcases.

NiKr wrote: »

Ok, I rewatched the boss fight and one of the devs did say that this was a simple boss that was meant to just showcase the interaction of big creatures with their environment.

Now, while I do appreciate that this was stated in the showcase, I do think that it should've been reiterated in the preface. Cause, as much of a joke as they've become, it's way easier to pay attention to their details than the info that's being said while you're trying to parse several visual things on your screen.

But this being a simple boss, I do still stick to my feedback of "show us the pvx, if you show us the easier pve". I think that'll be my main piece of feedback for this stream and for any future non-hardcore pve showcases.

Well, from my side I've decided to 'take hate' and post my actual thoughts because I'm definitely standing by the 'inflated 8-man' critique as it is the only valid one I think I can give with the information I have.

So my add to this for context is that.

"Someone tell me why this is a 16 or 32 man thing other than spectacle."

I hope this goes somewhere useful somehow because I was really really looking forward to being excited today...

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Barely anyone got out of aoe. And those who tried were mainly ranged people who were already three kilometers away from the boss, because range of attacks was quite far. The charge barely did any dmg, so I didn't notice that many people dodging it. And all the "killings" were just dps checks.

Now I get that this kind of breaking an encounter apart can be applied to most things and make them seem super simple, but that's just how most combat goes tbh. After rewatching the fight and hearing a dev say that this was a simple boss, I'm more ok with those mechanics being super simple. Obviously Azherae isn't, but that's mainly cause her standards are WAY HIGHER than mine

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But shouldn't we strive for better content across all lvls? Isn't that the point of Intrepid going for a super long leveling process? The low levels being fun too.

How would a person know that high lvl content is fun and cool when they have 200h between them and that content. All while their current content is "stay in one spot and unload your mana into the boss".