REAL Boss Fights
I'm posting this here because I'm frustrated and am about to make a huge rant about GW2. Inevitably adding to the ridiculous amounts of negativity which currently surround it. So, sorry for that.
First off; watch this video:
This is footage I recorded the other night, I've been a little behind in PSO2 since RL hit me pretty hard these past couple months. But I came to a realization while playing: This game is 100% free, and the boss fights are WAY more in depth than GW2's. What the hell happened?!
By this time, anyone who knows me knows how much I love PSO2, but I also love GW2. So I'm going to try and take biased views out of the equation. I'm not saying that one is better than the other and I'm not going to compare them on a grand scale. Focusing on one simple aspect: Boss fights.
To put it bluntly:
Very few things about this game disappointed me. The major one has been boss fights and the complete lack of interesting mechanics. In PSO2 every boss, no, EVERY enemy has their own set of unique attacks and tells. The game itself has no ability cooldowns and is almost completely action based, so these things are important.
Obviously GW2 is more of a traditional RPG, but I really hate how rarely you have to change tactics between fighting enemies. The strength of a traditional RPG come with utilizing team synergy and communication, as well as advanced tactics and unique mechanics for each boss encounter.
Yet, this F2P game, which doesn't really require any of that since it's action based and is nearly 100% player skill has more mechanics between bosses than GW2 does which we had to pay money for.
To put it into perspective:
The first boss ever introduced into the game was RockBear (sounds like a Pokemon doesn't it?). RockBear is a giant Golem-Ape-Like creature.
pso2-enemy1.jpg
The Mechanics of the RockBear encounter are as follows
Weak Point: Face (-60% damage when hit elsewhere)
It has three attacks:
- A large arcing right hand punch that knocks back.
A ranged jumping attack in which he flips up into the air and flies at you then bellyflops.
A close ranged grab with both hands which he then picks you up and throws you (does MASSIVE damage)
They seem rather simple, and they are. But the game adds an entirely new layer of depth. For example, if you avoid his punch (which he only uses when he's in range of you) whiff, he falls on his back and you have time to hit him without any risk.
When you're far away from him, he does the bellyflop, if you make this whiff he lands on his belly and then proceeds to get up and hold his torso and writhe in pain, also giving you an opportunity to deal some free damage.
When he misses with his grab, he stumbles and falls over. Now, keep in mind that this is the very first boss in the game. None of the bosses past him become vulnerable that easily. And often introduce new mechanics that you have to use to get them to become vulnerable.
Ontop of this, once RockBear reaches 50% health (which you can't see btw) he becomes Enraged. His attacks do a lot more damage and in addition, he no longer becomes vulnerable so easily. His right hand punch becomes a 3 hit combo, and does not leave him vulnerable if he misses. And his bellyflop no longer stuns him, as he does handstands after and continues to jump at you several times, at which point he ends by flipping on his feet upon the last attack missing. Leaving his only vulnerability his throw, which at this point will one shot you if he grabs you (assuming you're the appropriate level for the boss of course).
And if that wasn't enough:
When you enter the boss area with at least 2-3 people in your party (including yourself), enemy mobs spawn throughout the fight and two RockBears are present. Ontop of this, if you have a full party of 4, there are even more adds and once you defeat one of the two RockBears, a third jumps into the area for a total of 3.
Not only does this make the encounter more difficult, since there are now 3 bosses, you get triple the rewards for beating them. EXP and loot from all of them individually.
This is a FREE TO PLAY GAME compared to GW2, which you have to pay money for.
The format is obviously different as the gamestyles aren't the same. But what was the point of removing the trinity if almost all of the bosses follow generic MMO mechanics? Stay out of the fire, don't get hit by the cleave, break players out of stasis. Etc.
To it's credit: GW2 does have a handful of unique bosses, 80% of which are now in the fractals. So I really hope they expand on that. But outside of the Fractals, the bosses are either really generic, or really easy. Some of the most unique bosses in the game can be found via storymode. But story mode is a JOKE and you're never really given an incentive to run it more than once unless you're helping a friend. It's ridiculous.
And some of the ones that are unique and are difficult are just plain idiotic. CoF path 2, for example. When Magg is setting the charges of his "Kaboomium" on the barricade to break it open and you have to protect him from waves of mobs for a set amount of time.
The "STRATEGY" for this encounter(after it was made more difficult) is to have 1 person run around the room like an idiot and kite all the mobs until they're about to die, then send in more people to kite them around while that one person dies and runs back, who then waits outside the room for the people in front of him to die so he can run back in and continue the chain until the timer runs out.
Are you #@$%ing kidding me?
I mean seriously? Maybe, someone somewhere has figured out a better way to run it where you don't die and you use actual strategy to beat the event. But in the end, that is the tactic that most groups use, because that's what's easier to do and takes the least amount of time. KILLING yourself, over and over while this stupid Asura sets up a bomb.
The repair bill isn't even what makes me mad What makes me mad is that they messed up the path and made it braindead easy, which they then looked to fix by making it "harder", and THIS was the choice they decided to make. Not make the final encounter, an actual encounter instead of a stupid gimmick. Or make some of the bosses before that specific part ACTUAL bosses. No. They settled on this stupid, lazy, piece of crap design choice.
I mean realistically I could do this all day.
Alpha, in CoE. I do like Alpha's encounters, A LOT. Like A LOT a lot. I thoroughly enjoy the fact that if your group is good enough you'll never die once while fighting him the several times you encounter him in each path. But I was extremely disappointed that when you encounter him on each path, that the only mechanic that changed is which spells he casts and what elements he uses.
There's another retarded fight in CoE where you have to fire lasers at a boss to lower his shield, then jump down some platforms that vanish periodically and do as much damage as you can before he puts the shield back up and knocks you into lava which can pretty much insta-kill most people. It was cool that it had a puzzle and stuff, but once you get the puzzle down the boss itself is a joke. Not like, "Oh I know these mechanics, it's now a joke boss" it literally, has no more difficulty after it.
Even in other MMO's once you learn the bosses mechanics, and you have all of it down, it can still be really hard to deal with some of their stuff. In GW2, however, once you have a boss fight down literally almost all of the challenge is GONE. And that bothers me, greatly.
Because here I am playing this game that I paid no money for and finding WAY MORE DEPTH within the boss fights and how you have to beat each one, compared to this high budget took-5-years-to-make MMO that I've been waiting for, and it's so completely braindead that it makes me sick.
Also to it's credit, obviously GW2 does a whole lot of things that PSO2 doesn't, which is why I'm not saying one is better than the other. Nor am I comparing them on a grand scale because they really are very different. But as far as boss fights go? GW2 dropped the ball the first time around.
They've added in the fractals which I Loooovvvveee and I realize I'm in the minority when it comes to GW2, because most people that play this game don't come from raiding backgrounds or hated raiding. But while doing so they've created an ungodly amount of bad-PR within the community.
They've said they're going to go back and "completely revamp" all of the explorable dungeons, which I look forward to. But honestly, I'm starting to lose faith in ArenaNet. They're making the SWTOR mistake of addressing problems with fixes that then in turn, seem to create more problems.
But then again, maybe it's just me.
Edit: You know what really gets to me the most? In GW2 when you learn a fight you can pretty much auto-pilot it and win. Even the more complex ones. There are very few fights where you can't recover from if you stop paying attention. In PSO2, no matter how many times I do a fight in a difficulty that I'm the appropriate level for (Normal, hard, very hard etc), if I get caught sleeping, I get hit HARD. You'll notice in the video, that I get hit once and well over 50% of my life is gone. I have to keep moving, I can't slack of and not attack when given opportunities to hit weak points.
Because if I take more than one hit, I'm dead. I honestly got lucky when I lived with 13hp left. I should have died right there.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Vayne
