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What if.. players ran bosses?
Hathi
Member Posts: 236
Suppose a game offered the ability for players to play as Bosses they defeated? It could be in the form of a Boss soul for example. A rare drop.
If the player loots it, they get the option to play as the boss once. Players who won the prize are placed on a list. Much like a LFG list. When a raid or team has reached the spawn area of the Boss, the game asks the raid/ group if they wish to encounter a player run Boss. When they say yes, that executes a random call to players online who have won the prize.
If there are no players available/ willing then the game goes into default npc mode.
If a player accepts the role, the players avatar is suspended and "summoned" into the boss. A 30 second timer perhaps to begin. Players have access to all the skills the Boss gets. Player bosses get experience and loot depending on who they defeat. Raids get a higher chance to loot rare items when fighting player run bosses.
Could it be possible?
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Comments
possible, sure, good idea - no way. players can think and the first thing they are going to do is 1 of 2 situations. 1) treat it like PVP and kill all the healers, or 2) stand still and make the fight easy.
It could be possible. Your faith in the average user to have a genuine desire to act fairly and in the best interest of the game's community is admirable.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
How could raids who really want to fight a player run boss, strategize? Maybe the taunt skill from fighters has to toggle off the targeting of Bosses? or like in some pvp games, a taunt ignored really debuffs the raid boss player?
Finally - Best site for Chuck Norris
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
still sounds like your trying to treat it like a PVP situation. what buff could you possible give a 1.5million HP boss controlled by a player to make him care about a 22k HP palyer enough to ignore the 8K healer on a swing of 3-5K in 5seconds.
something to make his defeat faster? that then becomes situation 2, and easier fight with a new mechanic ot exploit
Sounds great as long as you plan and make adjustments for people who just aren't going to be good at being the boss and people who intentionally let people kill themselves for the loot.
Oh and give the boss plenty of stuff to do, you're not just waiting around all day for people to raid you.
This would be a good idea in games, which doesn't have predefined roles or classes like Mortal Online or Darkfall, Dawntide....
However in games with classes it would be very difficult to balance. A tank, who can't aggro the boss would be pretty much useless.
A healer, who gets attacked all the time also.
A taunt skill for example would have to change the tanks and healers appearance, so the boss player would have to decide, which one the fake is.
They would also have to choose the bosses player randomly, so people can't play the boss for some friends and stand still, so they get faster the loot.
I think it would be nice if there could be a way to make ‘quest giving’ mutually beneficial.
My thinking is basically this, If I am a level max player at what point do I get to not be bossed around by NPC’s to go and kill x?
I haven’t really come up with a good idea but you basically see my point.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Yeah, just thinking..
What limits the raid bosses as we know now? - Taunt keeps the attention.
What else? Rate of attack - raid bosses generally strike for high damage, but slowly. giving time for the team to recover. So a game assigns long cooldowns for Boss skills
Rate of movement - most raid bosses are slower than the average toon. Hence, kiting is a known battle tactic. I see no reason to make a Raid boss faster just because a player is at the helm.
Vision - this is where a game could make a difference. A player who is the puppet master of a boss only sees the event in the 1st person view. and raid player names/ guilds/ lifebars are disabled for the puppet master. He can still look down and turn around, but he loses the 3rd person view.
Major raid boss skills we often see:
Area of effect - a dragon breath, a mega bomb, etc. high amount of damage in a large area. Here we can also give a long cooldown per use. But players have to be able to be prepared like any other raid (resistance buffs, items, potions, etc) to mitigate these impacts.
Summon minions - A common tactic as well. The amount of minions summoned can be randomized and again, a long cooldown helps deter it from being spammed unfairly.
Confusion/ sleep/ charm/ fear - the crowd control skill - long cooldowns and allow the effects to be dispelled
physical attacks - basic attacks which hit hard but cna be blocked and mitigated. Cooldown not as long.
Finally - Best site for Chuck Norris
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Don't play the boss that's too easily exploitable, but how about supporting the boss? Lets say there's a boss encounter and a group of players is engaging it. Rather than letting some script control elements like targets on the floor, why not let players do it via turrets or some other mechanic. They don't actively attack players, but they make up the random elements of the fight, at that point its much more about balancing the damage available to the opposing players rather than trying to figure out everyway to stop them exploiting it.
And if the enemy players suck at least the boss can still be challenging on its own. It would certainly change up the boss fights a bit, and it adds elements of pvp, and even blurs the borders of just how "instanced" a fight is when the other players can mess with you after all.
This reminds me of the EQ monster project which was just a design nightmare for them but incredibly popular. It just goes to show just how outside the box people should be thinking.
Maybe if the boss has a different world view than what a player normally sees. Only characters who taunt or do a great deal of damage (or healing points) are visible while the others just become indistinguishable in the background. This would prevent the player controlled boss from identifying and attacking the healers first (as the boss can't see the healers). Characters who taunted may become brightly colored and take up a large portion of the boss's view.
Of course, a smart or experienced player controlling the boss could eventually figure out how to get around the limitations.
Maybe have the player just influence the boss but not directly control it? (Just like getting a real live puppy to do what you want)
I really like OP's idea, unfortunaly this means the majority of players need to do a little thinking and get out of their comfort zone of the holy trinity.
Do believe Torments idea is more vailable for today's generation of people into this genre.
Thus supporting both OP's aswell Torments idea's. Would love to see it work in a MMORPG. But as UOlover said it requires both players and developers to truly think outside the box.
Or how about you put it into a game that doesn't use tanking or threat generation. The vast, VAST majority of problems are solved and you could actually have a pretty interesting boss battle. Such a system does not work with the trinity the people in this thread should realise this.
This is why PvE is a joke. The mobs should act at the limits of their abilities - not be limited by some artifical mechanic.
If only PvE in MMOs was like PvE in PnP...which is basically PvP (the players versus a GM/DM) that is going to play the mobs to the best of their abilities rather than just have them act as fodder.
D&D did not have "tanks"... and tanking is moronic mechanic.
Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Mage... no tank.
If there were no tanking, mob AIs were better...PvE would be so much better.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
So it's pvp but one person gets a sooooper character? Can't see that working as 90% of mmo players are shrinking violets who are against any form of pvp in the first place.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I know one thing. If this actually happened. I would kick all your ass's ; ) I would be like the soup nazi from Seinfeld. "HA! No loot for you!"
If it were balanced it might not be too bad.
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Patchwork in Naxx would be impossible to kill if ran by a player. Too much health and too much damage. Kill the healers and then kill the DPS, ignor the tank.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
PvP doesn't really have much to do with this discussion since It's more akin to an mmo without the holy trinity with smart AI than the average mmo pvp. There are a lot more people that dislike the holy trinity than there are who like PvP.
this is a good idea but there are some problems with this system,
1) the tank/healing system doesn't work anymore, and you can only solve this by making this system unnessesary
2) when a player becomes the boss, he needs to figure out how the boss spells work etc in 30 sec so the fight will be rather easy for the raid.
3) when a group asks this they probably do it for a challenge and when there comes a person who'll just stand there till he dies, the group doesn't have the challenge at all.
You know there are games where a player controls every NPC in the game...they are called Pen and paper RPGs and computer RPGs massive or nto are a long,long,long,LONG way from ever matching them on that front plus an active imagination still beats the hell out of any graphics card!
But other than that it could be an intersting mechanic to work into a MMO of some kind.
It's an intriguing idea, but one with tons of potential for problems like, how do you prevent people from letting others win? The farming potential is far too great as is the possibility of making a "boss" not so tough.
It COULD work, but it would need a lot of checks and balances to ensure it's not abused.
Right, well just because something is hard doesn't mean you don't do it. That's the mindset that has the industry in the state it is in.
I would A) Eploit it by giving my friends an easy kill or
If I don't know the people I'm fighting, I'd try and kill them as best I can or C) Grief in the form of prolonging the fight and making it as boring as possible.
2/3 are bad for gameplay. The leftover choice doesn't give equal challenge to everyone since players playing the boss aren't equal in player skill.
Not a good idea when you start thinking about it. Too many problems.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
PvP is the core of this discussion, unless you are suggesting that the person playing the boss is only allowed to attack mobs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre