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New Instances
So back in December we talked about a project that was being worked on in regards to new Instance types. I'm happy to announce that we're now very close to finally reaching a release point, so I felt like it would be a good time to discuss this new Instance with you.
Essentially we have created a Raid Dungeon Instance that's a lot different from the typical Instances we have now. There is very minimal mindless bashing to be had; the bulk of the dungeon is taken up by three different unique boss encounters. These fights are completely different from what you've come to expect in super mob fights like Tolonar, Zsarachnor, Elder Daemon, etc. You cannot solo these bosses, it is mechanically impossible for one single person to take on any of these fights. You also cannot simply have someone yank you back and forth while you bash the boss down; these fights come with the requirement of thinking and strategizing.
The goal of this Instance is to give you as players something to do as an endgame group that's not PK, not bashing, not sitting on a Lesser, but something that requires you to actively think and react as a group in a PVE setting that we hope will be a fun new layer to Aetolia. I say endgame because for the initial release of this Instance, we're really gearing it towards endgame players because one thing that Aetolia lacks is endgame content. Once you hit level 99+ there's not much for you to do if you aren't into PK outside of grind Xaanhal/Tiyen, and we really want to change that. This doesn't mean that we won't create lower leveled Instances of the same type in the future, just for this initial release its setup for the higher end player.
So with that said, let me break down the boss fights without giving out too many spoilers, note the names are simply a generic title given to each fight so as not to give any story/event elements away.
Boss Fight #1 "The Brothers"
[spoiler]This fight is a duo where your purpose as a team is to keep them separated and both halves of your group bash down each one separately. There is a catch in that you MUST keep the difference in their current HP within a certain percentage range, failure to do so will cause some pretty severe consequences and will likely result in a wipe. Also when you manage to slay one of the brothers, you power up the other due to him being enraged at seeing his brother felled.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]This fight is a duo where your purpose as a team is to keep them separated and both halves of your group bash down each one separately. There is a catch in that you MUST keep the difference in their current HP within a certain percentage range, failure to do so will cause some pretty severe consequences and will likely result in a wipe. Also when you manage to slay one of the brothers, you power up the other due to him being enraged at seeing his brother felled.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]This is a pretty simple fight compared to the others, as you simply need to control your DPS and keep both mobs apart so as to keep the total in room enemy DPS down to a minimum. Outside of these few things there really isn't much fancy factor to this fight. It is the intro fight and really just serves to get you into the mood of the Instance.[/spoiler]
Boss Fight #2 "The Dark Lady"
[spoiler]This is the first of the multiphase fights in this Instance, and is by far the one fight that just has a sheer volume of reactions and consequences for both the party and the boss itself. As the fight begins, the boss will periodically 'tag' a player and call them out. This player has to leave the room or else the boss becomes greatly empowered. Should this player re-enter the room before the tag is cleared, the boss will unleash a massive AoE that will likely result in a wipe to one or more players. The tag is passed to a different player randomly, thus allowing the previous player to swap out and get back into the fray.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]In the second Phase of the fight, the boss will start prompting a player to make a decision based on a set of choices she provides. The player's choice here determines one of nine possible reactions programmed into the fight. These range from good choices like damaging the boss, healing the group, slowing the boss down, to bad choices like spawning helper mobs, healing the boss, and unleashing devastating AoEs. As an added layer, failure to comply with the choice prompting will result in consequences as well so that there is no ignoring the boss when she makes her demands of an attacker.[/spoiler]
Boss Fight #3 "The General"
[spoiler]This fight has a total of four separate phases, with the final phase having two possible versions depending on the groups success(or lack thereof). In Phase One players will approach the boss like normal, getting it down in health until it kicks into Phase Two. In the second Phase, the boss takes to the skies and the players are forced to weather a ruthless bombardment while attempting to stun the boss and bring him back down to the ground so that the heavy hitters can put the DPS back on him.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]This will last until Phase Three, which is a healing phase. During this Phase players will be find the boss unable to be hurt while it attempts to recover. The group will then be forced to prevent the bosses minions from healing him, succeeding in this will allow the group to do massive damage to him and eventually strip his shield which will kickstart Phase Four on the good setting. The bad setting for Phase Four occurs when players fail to prevent the boss's recovery. The will in essence enter into the final Phase with a much harder boss. The final Phase is nearly identical to the first with minor adjustments made.[/spoiler]
So these are the bosses in a nutshell, the only other mobs in the Instance will be sporadic placement of 'trash mobs' just to give you something to chew on between boss fights. The flip side to all of this is that we will be introducing a system of rewarding players who drop bosses. I won't go into full detail on just what all you'll end up getting, but I will say that one of the normal rewards is going to be cryptic chests/chest pieces.
If you've ever played big time MMO's before, you will know that their dungeons tend to lock you in/put a cooldown on how often you can run it. We won't be implementing any sort of cooldown outside of the normal Instance cooldown already in place. What we will be doing is reducing the drop chance for you personally each time you clear a boss up to a certain percent, over a to be determined period of time. This way if all you wanted to do was run the Instance all day ever day, you are more than able to! You will just gain less rewards the closer and more numerous your runs are.
So, long-winded post aside, we hope this has sparked some interest in players from all walks of life. We're all pretty excited about this and hope to see it turn into something that we can add for endgame and <99 players on down the road. However, it's not 100% ready yet and soon we will be looking for testers who want to run the gauntlet and help us work out all the kinks so we can build up to an official public release. We're really looking for high end bashers who are equipped to the teeth for maximum PvE DPS and healing, as the goal is to find a decent medium to allow both artied out players and minimally equipped ones to equally enjoy the Instance.
Questions are welcome, anyone interested in being contacted to beta test should say so here so that we can look into speaking with you directly in the days to come.
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Comments
Or break things in a way they never possibly could have been broken by anyone else thus setting me back a year in coding! You know, either or.
My only complaint was that raids took so long to prep for and were a huge time investment requiring you to set aside six hours AT LEAST just to get part of the raid done. I'm kind of hoping that raid instances here won't require as much of a time sink as WoW raids because that would suck.
Message #17059 Sent By: Oleis Received On: 1/03/2014/17:24
"If it makes you feel better, just checking your artifact list threatens to crash my mudlet."
Yeah, I'd like to help - I'm not great on strategizing, but I can follow directions well, and am relatively tanky. Con2, sip2, enh2.
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax