Mechanics-Driven Fights

[Scarlet Shocker]

I read the title of this thread and was expecting "When pit crews get bolshy"

 

I has disappoint.

 

I think some mechanics are good, some less so. A lot depends on the imaginations of the dev/writers responsible. Like any mechanic, it can be over-used and often under use is the real trick. But when trying to influence almost 50 players to acct in coordination ther are few better tools

[High_Beam]

On 1/8/2025 at 2:10 PM, Skyhawke said:

I...would actually dig hooking up a dance dance revolution pad to my pc and challenging Recluse to a dance off. 

Peter Quill is a clown.  Don't be Peter Quill.

[Skyhawke]

[golstat2003]

On 1/8/2025 at 1:48 PM, laudwic said:

I don't want every major boss fight to have some puzzle that I need to figure out before I can actually just throw down and fight them.  I play CoH to turn my brain off and just have fun, I don't want to have to figure (or look at a website) out the 'trick' to every big fight.

 

Sometimes I do want this, but not in COH. That's why I play FFXIV time and again for those kind of fights. And it's also why I DON'T play it for long stretches of time and come back here.

 

There are so many videos about FFXIV fights and the mechanics to watch out for. I too would rather not have to deal with that in regular content here.

 

Mechanics driven fights as a part of Advanced Mode sure. As part of regular content, no thanks.

[Lunar Ronin]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Sometimes I do want this, but not in COH. That's why I play FFXIV time and again for those kind of fights. And it's also why I DON'T play it for long stretches of time and come back here.

 

There are so many videos about FFXIV fights and the mechanics to watch out for. I too would rather not have to deal with that in regular content here.

 

Mechanics driven fights as a part of Advanced Mode sure. As part of regular content, no thanks.

 

I've read that Final Fantasy XIV just had one of its worst years ever since its relaunch, with its population taking a bit of a dive.  Something about the mechanics of the latest expansion's group content being too difficult for the casual players in its player base, turning them off from the game.

[srmalloy]

On 1/8/2025 at 1:28 PM, biostem said:

What's the point of me selecting an AT, primary, secondary, pools, etc, if what really matters is that I move out of a red splotch or attack some random object, (possibly only during a "vulnerable period")? 

What's the point of throwing an AoE into a spawn, then backing around a corner to get them all to follow you and bunch up so that your teammates can lock them all down with an immobilize so they can be burned down with AoEs? It's all tactics; it's merely that some of the tactics are dictated by what your opponent(s) do. If they can trigger a barrage that drops high-damage AoE splashes around them, then your tactics will incorporate either being able to stand in the splashes and ignore the damage, or move so that you're not in the areas when they land ('Presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better').

 

Ideally, though, tactics evolve as people discover better ways to fight an opponent. Look at the Hamidon raids. I remember when you set out a tank/healer pair to keep Hami's attention, then everyone else clustered under a healing umbrella to take out the mitos, then stacked holds on the nucleus to defeat him. Hami evolved in response, and the tactics changed, with separate groups for each type of mito, clearing them, beating on the nucleus until the mitos respawned, then repeat until there were no more respawns and you could defeat the nucleus; these tactics evolved to only taking down one or two sets of mitos before piling on the nucleus, and a further tactic evolved, now called the 'hamikaze' tactic, where you just go in to pound the nucleus down before the mito spawns can overcome the damage it's taking. The final fight in the MLTF, likewise, has several different approaches people have used to defeat Lord Recluse. In other content, though, one 'winning' tactic was found, and is adhered to with what seems to be no attempt to discover other, perhaps better, ways to win -- because it's perceived as difficult enough that the fixation on success obviates any thought of trying to find other ways to complete the content, resulting in teams being built with gear checks to ensure that the single winning tactic can be followed.

[tidge]

4 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

..and a further tactic evolved, now called the 'hamikaze' tactic, where you just go in to pound the nucleus down before the mito spawns can overcome the damage it's taking.

 

I'm somewhat surprised that this isn't the default tactic in Hamidon raids. I know that not every character in a raid has Lores, and that it is hard to coordinate use of Lores, but it has always struck me as the absolute quickest way to defeat Hamidon.

 

Having written the above, one of the things that sours the Hamidon raid in my experience is that an entire league will "give up" after a triple bloom (which is a possible outcome of this strategy). The villain in me sneers at the noble heroes who refuse to consider redside because they have only noble intentions of protecting their precious city who give up because 'the juice isn't worth the squeeze.'

[srmalloy]

8 minutes ago, tidge said:

Having written the above, one of the things that sours the Hamidon raid in my experience is that an entire league will "give up" after a triple bloom (which is a possible outcome of this strategy). The villain in me sneers at the noble heroes who refuse to consider redside because they have only noble intentions of protecting their precious city who give up because 'the juice isn't worth the squeeze.'

In most cases, you're right, and someone will open up The Abyss 2 so the league can move there and start over with a 'fresh Hamidon' while the triple-bloom ages and eventually despawns, but I've also been part of leagues that decided to just collect stacks of EoEs and Rages so they can power past the blooms, since it isn't going to get any worse now that it's happened.

[Lunar Ronin]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

I'm somewhat surprised that this isn't the default tactic in Hamidon raids. I know that not every character in a raid has Lores, and that it is hard to coordinate use of Lores, but it has always struck me as the absolute quickest way to defeat Hamidon.

 

The Hamidon raid is a pathetic joke compared to what it was on live, thanks to the combination of uber character builds that Homecoming allows and Incarnate abilities.  Some Hamidon raid leaders prefer it not just being a complete roflstomp faceroll and have a little vestige of the raid strategy from live.

[Lunar Ronin]

Interestingly and coincidentally, PC Gamer published an article today about World of Warcraft's Mythic Plus dungeons are struggling as people are abandoning it.

 

Hazzikostas said that Blizzard expected some drop in player numbers as more options became available for dungeon-runners at lower difficulty levels, including increased rewards in easier dungeons and the advent of Delves, short dungeons for single players or groups.

 

[...] "There's been significant discourse in recent weeks on social media, and in community forums, regarding Mythic Plus," Cox said. "Specifically, a poignant sense of unhappiness with how the Season has been progressing. Key pain points have been things like depleting keystones when you don't beat a timer, a very narrow meta [group composition], rewards not feeling like they match up with keystone levels, as well as an overall feeling that keys are just too difficult."

 

TL;DR: With World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV both, over the past year their developers made their group content too difficult for the average player, and they're losing players as a result.

 

I just find this an interesting contrast to City of Heroes.

[Snarky]

On 1/8/2025 at 6:52 AM, Seed22 said:

After really ramping up my exposure to new releases in 2024 and beating a good number of games with fun and fair but challenging bosses via mechanics, I wondered if that’d be something you all would want for CoH? 

 

It doesn’t have to be exclusive to HM. I usually find myself just fighting to not fall asleep at a lot of the older climactic fights either in TFs or arcs in CoH and I was wondering, what if we gave them appropriate but escalating mechanics for their levels? With light mechanics being the lower levels all the way up to very in depth and challenging ones by Incarnates and HM.

 

I think this would go a long way to making all ATs more desired for teaming, as some mechanics would be able to be mitigated via CC or reduced via debuff(still would need to react and dodge though or interact in some way with it) 

 

An example for low level: Giving the frostfire mish a little makeover to introduce empowering flame pillarsand ice…somethings, the flame would boost FF’s damage and res, while the ice would slightly impede the team’s recharge or vision(could be mini blizzards that float around the room). 
 

You’d have to destroy the pillars(4) while trying to survive against frostfire. Simple introduction to boss based mechanics.

 

 

What are your thoughts?

WoW has a ton of this stuff.  decades worth.  and maybe 30% actually makes any sense in the context of the situation, 70% is just forced or unnecessary.  but only about 1% of it is "cool"  most of it is "have you practiced leaping through the air, turning, and activating a power we will tell you about mid flight?"  

 

the stuff that we have like this, on Barracuda, The Really Hard Way, Cathedral of Pain, is just a dice shoot whether the team will measure up.  After you have invested time and effort to be there for badge/reward/power.  

[Luminara]

[biostem]

This entire discussion kind of reminds me of how some games include "quick-time events", where it doesn't matter how good you are at playing the main parts of the game, because being able to rapidly smack X at just the right time will determine how well/poorly you'll progress at this critical juncture, if at all...

[ivanhedgehog]

4 hours ago, Snarky said:

WoW has a ton of this stuff.  decades worth.  and maybe 30% actually makes any sense in the context of the situation, 70% is just forced or unnecessary.  but only about 1% of it is "cool"  most of it is "have you practiced leaping through the air, turning, and activating a power we will tell you about mid flight?"  

 

the stuff that we have like this, on Barracuda, The Really Hard Way, Cathedral of Pain, is just a dice shoot whether the team will measure up.  After you have invested time and effort to be there for badge/reward/power.  

When the pirate expansion in swtor came out my guild leader had everyone NOT read the raid guides so we could "figure it out together" Since none of the mechanics made any sense together it was just a death fest the first evening. By the second run we got tired of massive repair bills and read the guides. Wow has gotten so many regular quests require you to pull up wow head to find out what the heck they want you to do. No thank you. we were happy when COH came back, lets not change it to a wow clone.