#Hard Mode Raids

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

idle fiber
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Raids….. are kind of a mess difficulty wise.

Raids are way too easy mechanically and only really challenging because of mob damage, so I was thinking, why not have a group finder or normal mode with the base mechanics, then hard mode raids with more complicated mechanics, more enemy health (not more damage they have enough) and better rewards. Raids are a mixed bag of difficulty, you could get a terrible group and fail horribly, or you could have 2 mythic using archers that melt Greg before you can blink.

The main issue is that the CT knows that pfinder exists, so they have to design the raid to be simple enough for randoms to do together, which leads to the experienced players or people who play with friends having an easy time. Being able to play with people you know leads to better communication and an easier time, but it also leads to raids being some of the easiest content in the game.

Did you know that Sir7alot and a few others did armorless TNA? I bring this up to show that an experienced group can do it pretty easily. A hard mode would solve all these issues, it would bring complexity and a hard group challenge for people who want it, while still allowing for people without friends to do the raid.

white egret
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so true

placid mauve
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muiltiple hour long destiny 2 esque raids that wynncraft totally cant handle please 🙏

idle fiber
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I didn’t mean that

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I meant multiple day long World of Warcraft raids that Wynncraft totally can’t handle

white egret
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oh god not the 2 hour long wipes on the same boss on heroic difficulty

knotty ravine
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Master Mode in a nutshell

wanton coral
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like master mode (bring back instant fire lazer and just one shots u if u get touched !)

ionic cosmos
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And remove raid buffs completely from Hard Mode Raids

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That justifies the reward increase

minor musk
idle fiber
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My thought for HM raids is to actually require some communication, you can basically solo most raid encounters

wanton coral
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🤯 communication

next sequoia
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If hard mode raids were added some of the mechanics and raid boss attacks/“puzzles” should be designed around ff14 savage where positioning timing and comms actually matter

knotty herald
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make future raids harder? ok like

wanton coral
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troll have it so greg sends your connection to the void be appart of the fight

glacial thorn
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I thought we had s hard mode, its called the public queue

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Easy mode is when your doing it in a party from your guild or friends who actually know what theyre doing

austere drum
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Just raid with 3 morphs, hard mode activated like

idle fiber
unkempt notch
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yoo an indirect reference to naked tna thanks

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but yes i agree, i can literally do EVERYTHING in the game naked, even tna. i would really like a hard mode of some sort, harder than naked tna. 19 attempts was long but it was fun figuring out the mechanics and strategies. btw we weren’t experienced in tna, but more like experienced in playing naked lol

forest bison
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so HEAR ME OUT HERE……. if you want to make the raids harder mechanically… use worse builds… and if you want the raids to be more mechanically complex…… WJAT IF… the ct put their raid making skills to the test in a new raid that more than 20 people would play per day and made that more mechanically challenging

idle fiber
unkempt notch
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birthday suit 💀💀💀

junior ledge
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i don’t think it’s as easy as “just make raids more mechanically difficult”

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for a long time I’ve always personally thought that wynn mobility is way too fucking good and to a degree it can trivialize literally every boss fight in the game (which especially holds true for the nameless) and no shade to crokee but his naked run really just exemplifies this to the next level by escaping around the entire boss fight and essentially never getting hit

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vertical teleports, frenzy, escape in general, whirlwind strike + aerodynamics … you can pretty much completely dance or disengage from any nameless spell for basically free

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i play shaman the most in tna and having a mobility spell that’s pretty objectively worse than all those other options keeps the fight pretty mechanically interesting for me

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whenever I play archer or warrior I basically just turn my brain off because my mobility is so good

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how do you balance and design raid bosses around players zipping around the speed of light without making it worse for the less mobile classes/archetypes/builds?

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please note: this is NOT me saying that all the best forms of wynn mobility need to be gutted or whatever

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if that decision was up to me regardless of whether it would be ultimately healthy for game balance or design I wouldn’t do it because wynn mobility being, let’s face it, incredibly fun, is massively ingrained within the community and changing it would obviously lead to backlash

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so my point here is take every “just make x content harder” suggestion with a grain of salt

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I’d REALLY like to see someone do tna naked with shaman

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now THAT would truly be impressive

idle fiber
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Did you just…..

broken pebble
broken pebble
idle fiber
junior ledge
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🤣

lyric phoenix
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armorless tna is more the builds than the skill

plain blade
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The boss is easier armorless than the rest of the raid

unkempt notch
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45 minutes in greg, where 30 minutes is just me hit and run

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hardest challenge ive ever done in a run

junior ledge
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aw sick man 30 minutes of escaping and sniping the boss omg

broken pebble
broken pebble
broken pebble
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I take so much damage on the tree altar

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How do u have 9k hp tho wtf

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15k

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Send build?

unkempt notch
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tomes are hpr hpr hpr hpr 2 mythic tna tomes of water and rainbow, and some random guild tome

broken pebble
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Dang

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Yall loaded

unkempt notch
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what money does to a mf

idle fiber
placid mauve
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he not wrong

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Its not very difficult mechanically, theres a big portion of luck involved when getting hit or not which plays a part

forest bison
junior ledge
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eyoshin moment

placid mauve
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OH LORD QUACKULA IS EYOSHIN

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This explains quite abit

idle fiber
junior ledge
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LMAO

wind trail
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At a very minimum a "hardmode" raid ought to use every single raid room

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But yeah, a good chunk of what's keeping Wynn from getting more difficult in terms of mechanics is the fact that it doesn't switch from solo content into group content once you enter difficult sections of the game

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The Archetypes - and all Wynn builds, honestly - are all primarily built to be able to DPS and sustain, which is fine in the normal overworld

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But what specialization exists doesn't seem to be getting capitalized on - Note Pre-Hotfix 2 Paladin, which was busted in the tanking department, but then note that the Archetypes busted DPS-wise aren't getting hit near as hard

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...

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If you want difficult team content, you're going to need the highest-end characters to be tuned really high in one department at the cost of some horrible weakness that their teammate can then cover

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As long as everyone's a generalist, then teams are just a force multiplier, not a necessity. Any pumped-up damage numbers can just be met with "not getting hit" and going at it for long enough

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More DPS gates, more tankbusters, unavoidable damage that has to be healed, in order to encourage support

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These are what you need to make a hardmode raid actually meaningfully difficult, but it's hard to have that if everyone can do big DPS and health sustain at the same time

junior ledge
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is that the type of game we want wynncraft to be though

wind trail
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In normal solo content, each of these classes acts like an imperfect generalist, having some defense and a varying amount of attacking power, but the differences only become really pronounced once you start attacking difficult group content

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(i.e, in wynn, raids)

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Since raids are functioning at this much, much higher level of difficulty, it shouldn't be impossible to just let classes function differently as they shift from easier to harder content

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When I say "generalist," I don't mean a jack-of-all trades that is competent at everything, I mean a role that does everything really well

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It should be totally fine for every archetype to be able to solo - up until Aledar & Tasim, even - but once you start hitting up raids then every archetype should hit some kind of plateau in a stat that's made up for by teammates

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I don't think that this would change the fundamental character of Wynn all that much

junior ledge
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i mean less so class gameplay moreso standard mmorpg raid boss design when i say what type of game do we want wynncraft to be

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because what you've described is, essentially, guild wars lol

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where the "big 3" of typical mmo classes are required for high difficulty wars

wind trail
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Not in a very heavy warring guild but that's good!

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Any game with systems even vaguely resembling a standard MMORPG finds itself falling towards the holy trinity

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Only when conflict resolution can happen in fundamentally different ways than "destroy these healthbars" is it not the standard setup for group content

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and it's the standard setup for good reason - it creates some role diversity and demands people work together cohesively in order to clear content

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there's a lot of variance in "standard mmo raid boss design," and even then raid bosses are often some of the most engaging content in a game

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Wynn already has it's fundamentally unique character in its god-tier item system, and it's probably fine to take some cues from some already well-established tools

junior ledge
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many people dont really, uh, like guild wars for this very exact reasoning lol

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like yeah, it's cool that it needs a variety of archetypes working together but it feels very forced and just the overall gameplay of guild wars is basically kill big tower before it kills you

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i think the big thing to take away here is trying to consider wynncraft's gameplay at its core and why me and others are skeptical of making them like "traditional" mmos raid gameplay wise

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when you think of wynncraft spell combat, what comes to your mind?

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it's usually using movement spells a ton and damaging/crowd control spells and to dodge boss attacks

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funny build numbers and abilities being way too strong currently, fundamentally it's up to the player's skill

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content like guild wars just doesnt really follow that traditional formula and makes certain classes/archetypes completely unviable and doesnt really involve movement/crowd control at all (no, tower aura does not count)

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to be fair, i really have next to no experience regarding traditional mmos but designing raid bosses in a way that essentially forces the "holy trinity" would have pretty detrimental effects on the community, especially when a good chunk of archetypes dont fall into any one of these categories

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wynn raid bosses are currently in a really weird spot where they try to keep that typical wynn spell gameplay but also trying to just faintly incentivize using tanking/healing archetypes, which is good imo

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although, trying to actually keep that balance of incentivizing those archetypes and not making them either useless or required and maintaining normal wynn gameplay is really fucking difficult lol

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again i have next to no experience with other mmorpgs so i dont know what their raid bosses are like, but with all respect to the content team i dont know if they can really pull it off well and not go against the normal gameplay loop

wind trail
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TNA sorta does this with Watched?

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But yeah, you raise a whole bunch of interesting points, there. Not every archetype is built for trinity play, and Mobility/CC is a massive chunk of Wynn's very very action combat system

junior ledge
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well, the non watched phases of the nameless are very mobility heavy lol

wind trail
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Yeah, they are. I was mostly thinking the phase change there, but TNA is overall a really mobile fight

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Honestly the only thing I'd hold against it is that the arena is probably a bit too big?

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I understand that that's the space the purple circles need to work, but it's p easy to disengage

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moving over to NoL, the red corners are a great example of arena hazards

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because honestly boss design, especially w/ scripted spells, is actually pretty good?

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I can easily imagine "hardmode" content focusing more on tightening the movement gap than pumping up numbers

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Imagine a boss arena where you'll get hit by a Deathknell wretch style attack every so often unless you and your teammates manage to ascend to four different platforms in time

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Or a massive wave attack going out that has telegraphed gaps in it that you need to weave through

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Or a need for a party member to be constantly running back and forth between a supply depot and their teammates in order to keep up a protective effect that keeps the boss from instantly destroying them

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...

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I remain by the point that any "Hardmode" raid needs to have every single raid room, though. No RNG, just length. Buffs after every two rooms.

junior ledge
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well that just sounds exhausting

wind trail
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Maybe then two rooms, miniboss, buff?

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And when I say miniboss I mean miniboss in comparison to the big guy at the end

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Still giant murderous bosses, just two extra ones at midpoints in the raid

junior ledge
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i feel like raids absolutely should be longer in regards to challenge rooms and the boss and tna did make more interesting longer challenges but doing every room just sounds uninteresting

wind trail
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hmmm

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maybe, yeah. Every single raid room is sounding like FF length, and that one already has a reputation

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I suggested the midway bosses because I felt like that might reduce the tedium

junior ledge
wind trail
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aye true

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part of why TNA is the best raid

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Would it be better if they got rid of the barrier wall and let you fall to your death? Yes

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But TNA as-is is pretty great arena hazard wise

junior ledge
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it also does holy trinity incentivization to a certain degree because provoke users there are invaluable although you run into the issue of completely trivialization of the boss fight's mechanics or not running it at all

wind trail
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Provoke users keeping their teammates from dying horribly is provoke users doing their job

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(gods know they're not dpsing)

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but I always felt like the Paladin Problem was defense too high, not provoke too much

junior ledge
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i know, but you also have to ask yourself is completely trivializing the boss fight how we should incentivize running these builds

wind trail
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A boss attacking a target for a lot of damage should never be the primary way party members are getting hurt, I feel

junior ledge
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personally i think builds/items and certain setups are still too tanky period and leads to invulnerability (which people run with provoke paladin setups to never die) and also now permanently hold aggro

wind trail
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boss damage is an obstacle, one of many

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there's also crowd mobs to control, arena hazards, and AoE attacks

junior ledge
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and you cant really make the boss fight threatening/more damaging for those niche builds without completely ruining build diversity for all other players involved

wind trail
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juggling all these incoming threats can create the difficulty there

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I want to see the little ones tearing players limb from limb

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I want to see falling into the purple circles being a massive damage hit

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Yes, again, I unironically want to see you be able to fall of the edge of the Arena

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Boss attacks are not and should never be the primary way players are going down

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This leads to an unwinnable numbers game

junior ledge
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ive suggested that before because giga tanks are still wall hugging and essentially trivializing all the boss mechanics

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and certain boss spells just dont even work on the edge of the arena at all due to technical reasons

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so all those arena hazards that make the boss fight so great just dont even exist anymore

wind trail
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I know for a fact that they can teleport greg back on if he falls

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they could even script it and have him re-emerge from a void hole for immersion

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you're fighting on a void slab here, bottomless pits are an ancient staple of game hazard design

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Same for the colossus

junior ledge
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one of the main criticisms of tna/raid bosses in general is that they just feel like massively scaled up normal bosses because other than indirectly supporting each other there are no various tasks or obstacles that require a team to beat, or at the very least, make much easier

wind trail
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fight becomes ten times more difficult right then and there if falling off the shards leads to death

junior ledge
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as mechanically, nothing about the nameless fight changes whether you're fighting individually or as a team

wind trail
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It's still solo content, just buffed

junior ledge
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basically

wind trail
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The raid rooms manage this rather well, really

white egret
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be cool if they added a mechanic that requires teamwork, for example if greg falls at a certain amount of hp the arena gets split in 2 and there are 2 mini bosses in each side that have to be killed at the same time

junior ledge
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i feel like raid bosses should still be solo-able but adding more objectives that teams complete easier would make them feel more like actual raids

wind trail
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splitting the party in a combat situation isn't great (see: TCC)

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at least, not in a difficult one

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I do not feel like you should be able to solo a raid boss

junior ledge
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there really are just so many factors to take into consideration when balancing and designing wynn raids that frankly are results of near decade old design choices that a lot of people dont realize

junior ledge
wind trail
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There is a four-player req to even enter one

turbid walrus
wind trail
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Raids are billed as group content as opposed to the entire rest of the game

junior ledge
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also consider that that four player req is massively lower than that of other mmorpg raid bosses

wind trail
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Wynn is a very solo/small group affair

turbid walrus
wind trail
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if you make raid bosses soloable, you make a boss that can be cleared with one of four people actually trying hard

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or four of four people not trying particularly hard

junior ledge
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yeah i know it's due to technical limitations that raids are primarily 4 player

turbid walrus
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the only way to solve this would be to have an instance with world dedicated to the raid, and there you can have more than 10 ppl doing a raid

wind trail
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putting us right back where we began

junior ledge
wind trail
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when you design with the intent of making solo play possible, you have designed a solo encounter

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it is less balance and more mutual irreconcilability

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Team difficulty comes from making multiple people act in well in cohesion, not multiple people playing well

junior ledge
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I dunno, again this goes back to that main point of what kind of game do we want wynncraft to be which is relatively subjective but you also have to consider that wynn has been built off the foundation of years of being primarily a single player game focused on quests

wind trail
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aye true

turbid walrus
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notg is a kinda good raid about team-working, that's kinda the proof they can make raids need more cohesion & teampay

wind trail
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All the raid rooms are,

turbid walrus
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oooohhh

junior ledge
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🤔feel like tna does literally everything notg does but better

wind trail
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in every raid. it's the bosses we're talking about

turbid walrus
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ok ok mb

junior ledge
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yeah raid rooms absolutely requiring teamwork and multiple players alive is fine imo

wind trail
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npnpnpnp

junior ledge
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since it’s moreso objective based rather than just, kill big enemy

wind trail
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objectives don't stop being objectives when they become "kill big enemy"

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a raid boss is not fundamentally different from a challenge room

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it's just a different kind of challenge

junior ledge
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ok well i think there is a very big fundamental difference between challenge rooms with objectives like tna tree room and the boss lol

turbid walrus
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but ehhhh, to be honest, making the boss need more teamwork would make it feel like a final room and not a boss room, I'm not sure if that's what wynncraft devs wants

wind trail
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I guess this loops back around to the question of should there be?

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A boss is fundamentally the challenge of "kill this guy"

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there is a healthbar and you need to get it to zero

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you've got your murder tools, your move tools, and your teammates

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the boss will do x y and z, these are sub-problems that you need to solve in order to stay alive for the big ones

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even the rooms ultimately often boil down to combat, since that's a system like wynn's main draw

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Bulb Room is a good example: it's nearly all combat, juggling the defense of bulb protection with the offense of bulb hunting

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.... but yeah

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idk if that's the angle the devs are going

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there's this perception that began with EO that the challenge rooms are just the lead-up to the big important fight

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and while that's good and all, big important fight already has EO

junior ledge
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i would say tree room is a better example because of the fact that you literally cannot beat it by yourself and you need other players to help you

wind trail
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and AHC
and LI
and every dungeon
and most quests
and boss altars

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etc etc etc yea tree room is a better example

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Soloable content is literally everywhere in Wynn and if raids are going to be billed as something different then I can't help but see "harder solo content" as a lack of realization of potential