Defy Conquest a case study in base boss design

24

Comments

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,517 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2023

    @HoundofShadow said:
    Let's bring back Heroic Boss Events!

    Oh wait, what happened? Players cried about it until it got taken out for months, and we haven't seen them since last year.

    No, no, no. Some players (not me) complained that they used the Dark Avengers, the worst sub-set of out of date 3* pretty much available for a Boss Event that was brutal (later rolled back by the Devs difficulty wise). C'mon Hound - you can do better!

    Oh and Edit: They couldn't bring back what had never existed before. There were no previous Heroic Boss Events. This was the first one. I don't know why they couldn't tweak it or try it again. Maybe ask the Devs?

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    Honestly, what did you expect for? Is there a hard boss event designed? Because I didn't realize yet.
    Thanos and galactus are so easy and boring that can be beated without even actually watching the screen.
    On this boss event there is a heroic requisite, plus no characters boosted, and kang has the annoying shield, so he manages to send away someone. It has a bit more of interest to play for me than others.
    And there are the bugged nodes of course, hardly that was intended.

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards

    Players like to cry about every difficulty levels. When it's tough, they cry. When it's easy, they cry. Regardless of how the dev design boss events, some groups are going to cry about it. The point is, will you be the one crying about the easy ones or the tough ones? It just so happen that the OP is unhappy about it being easy. Let's be honest, if the OP starts eating healthpacks, he's going to cry about it.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,517 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bad said:
    Honestly, what did you expect for? Is there a hard boss event designed? Because I didn't realize yet.
    Thanos and galactus are so easy and boring that can be beated without even actually watching the screen.
    On this boss event there is a heroic requisite, plus no characters boosted, and kang has the annoying shield, so he manages to send away someone. It has a bit more of interest to play for me than others.
    And there are the bugged nodes of course, hardly that was intended.

    Hound is the one who steered this on to difficulty and 3* players. The rest of us have been pretty consistent and @dianetics reasons i.e. when is a Boss Event not a Boss Event seem pretty spot on.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,517 Chairperson of the Boards

    @HoundofShadow said:
    Players like to cry about every difficulty levels. When it's tough, they cry. When it's easy, they cry. Regardless of how the dev design boss events, some groups are going to cry about it. The point is, will you be the one crying about the easy ones or the tough ones? It just so happen that the OP is unhappy about it being easy. Let's be honest, if the OP starts eating healthpacks, he's going to cry about it.

    Some players, sure.

    Please explain, using the existing context for Boss Events which character in this Boss Event has "Boss" powers? Can you with your hand on your heart say that the Boss fight in this "Boss" Event is any different to what could be served up in a standard PvE node?

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:

    Hound is the one who steered this on to difficulty and 3* players. The rest of us have been pretty consistent and @dianetics reasons i.e. when is a Boss Event not a Boss Event seem pretty spot on.

    And why is not a boss event? Because there is a team of 3? Being me the one who made a comment of a boss event of a team, I think it's an interesting idea. Why not, if we always are fighting teams?
    Also in the film appears modok so it's thematically based, while in gorr's film only appears him and his minions.
    Also OP makes suggestions that obviously would increase difficulty, so don't say it's not about difficulty neither.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,517 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bad said:

    @DAZ0273 said:

    Hound is the one who steered this on to difficulty and 3* players. The rest of us have been pretty consistent and @dianetics reasons i.e. when is a Boss Event not a Boss Event seem pretty spot on.

    And why is not a boss event? Because there is a team of 3? Being me the one who made a comment of a boss event of a team, I think it's an interesting idea. Why not, if we always are fighting teams?
    Also in the film appears modok so it's thematically based, while in gorr's film only appears him and his minions.
    Also OP makes suggestions that obviously would increase difficulty, so don't say it's not about difficulty neither.

    Because the "Boss" does nothing different to the already released character playable version?

    No problem with fighting teams. Sinister Six has Goblin + goons. Boss Rush (would love a crack at that again). Go nuts. But have it be special or what is the point? Might as well just stick it in a node of Simulator.

    I can't speak for @dianetics but I read this as difficulty very much not being the main basis of his gripes with this thing. Boss Events are meant to be fun diversions, at least to me they are, this is just a PvE node.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    I think this version of Kang does have some shield gimmick? Maybe?
    A few times I've seen some burst healing.
    But this could be the goon, I dunno.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,517 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bowgentle said:
    I think this version of Kang does have some shield gimmick? Maybe?
    A few times I've seen some burst healing.
    But this could be the goon, I dunno.

    Ah right! That changes EVERYTHING! Lol! :D

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    And gargantos or gorr events were so memorable? Just some puching-balls to spare some minutes.
    This kang has the annoying shield and also he hides behind the others when a cd reaches 0.
    If you want something memorable, in here there is a beautiful dawn background.

  • liminal_lad
    liminal_lad Posts: 498 Mover and Shaker

    @Bowgentle said:
    Yes I'm sure this was done on purpose.
    They probably did the non scaling nodes too to help players, right?
    Because they simply make no mistakes!

    Is there a problem with assuming positive intent on the part of the developers?

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,517 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bad said:
    And gargantos or gorr events were so memorable? Just some puching-balls to spare some minutes.
    This kang has the annoying shield and also he hides behind the others when a cd reaches 0.
    If you want something memorable, in here there is a beautiful dawn background.

    The mighty Kang the Conqueror hides behind others, lol! You couldn't make it up.

    I had forgotten about Gargantos actually, I will give you that one. Can you post the beautiful dawn background on here for me? I can't access MPQ right now. :(

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    I> @liminal_lad said:

    @Bowgentle said:
    Yes I'm sure this was done on purpose.
    They probably did the non scaling nodes too to help players, right?
    Because they simply make no mistakes!

    Is there a problem with assuming positive intent on the part of the developers?

    Judging by the last few months, I'm leaning towards this being a bug.

  • Sekilicious
    Sekilicious Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2023

    BCS has been interacting with the player base to find out what is and isn't working for us. We were pretty much ignored by Demiurge. Threads like this, where players suggest things that can be improved, are important feedback whether everyone in the playerbase, or the developers for that matter, agrees or not. Rather than the player base 'crying', as though the thoughts here were simply expressed for the sake of complaining.

  • MoosePrime
    MoosePrime Posts: 969 Critical Contributor

    @Heartbreaksoup said:
    I'm most baffled by the AIM MEDTECH hanging out with Kang and MODOK, as she does not appear to actually have any powers or do anything.

    I thought she was there to generate AP for Kang to use.

    Did the goon character change in different rounds? I'm using 5* Deadpool, and one round I thought his Wade and Measured was hitting the goon on Black, then later it was hitting on Purple.

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2023

    Let's talk about the elephant in the room that is rarely being brought up: the intelligence of AIs. When Demiurge was still blogging about MPQ, they touched on the topic about whether the AIs were cheating. In that blog, the dev also mentioned experimenting with playing against smarter AI but they decided against implementing it in the game. Between making challenging AIs and making the players happy, they went with the latter.

    BCS tried out Heroic Boss events, and after major complains, they are dead for now and we've been getting generic boss eventd again.

    Then, let's go back to the days where players were supposed to lose in boss events. I was not in that era yet, but players seemed pretty livid about that. If you're dealing with bosses, it makes sense that you lose majority of the time. Thanos destroyed majority of the heroes, and many other villians did. If you want to play a boss event where it feels like playing against a boss, let's bring the "players are supposed to lose" boss events. Let's have Kang fire his blue twice quickly so that you are left with only one hero to deal against him. It's thematic and it's a fitting scenario against bosses. You feel like you are losing, but with enough skills, you'll be able to beat boss fights with one hero while the other is away.

    Or we can also equip the bosses with R5 meta supports. However, it's clear that players hated the idea of giving AIs supports.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    @dianetics said:

    Gorr event was memorable. He had specific goons that I still remember. Don’t act like you don’t know what they did.
    His goons went invisible on damage and hit hard when they came back.
    I would love to do the Gorr event again because his goons were awesome.

    Arcade was a civil war rebrand…Kang was the lowest tier PvE I have ever seen.

    What new thing did this event bring? Besides broken subs that didn’t give points before the event was reset.

    Be honest, this was not a typical boss event.

    Oh yeah, I forgot about arcade. Probably not so memorable either!
    Gorr event was really good because they designed his minions.
    But as I said these boss events are thematically based. The minions were on his animations so they worked on them, also the shadowy background.
    This one is also thematically based however modok was already there and his minion so there is nothing more other than a boss team and the "cosmic dawn" background. >

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