Game Design So. What's up with raids?

I think most of us, especially myself, were hyped for raids when they were first revealed in the original 1.20 trailer. New teamwork-based replayable content, high difficulty, great rewards, and intense boss fights. It's everything most endgame players wanted. Right...?

Fast forward to today. It's common to see memes of how much people dislike raids, and how most would like the complete raids guild objective to be removed. We went from one of the most highly anticipated forms of content, to now among one of the most resented additions. What went wrong?

What are the issues?
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It's hard to point fingers at any one major/minor flaw that single-handedly changed the peoples' perception of raids. There are plenty of contributing factors, all of which I'll attempt to go over in this thread, alongside reviewing each individual raid, including all the various challenge rooms, and boss fights.

• So, so buggy

Easily the most glaring issue people discuss on the topic of raids and why they are often unenjoyable. Wynn will always have bugs and that's the inevitable fact when you're forced to use Minecraft as a game engine. Raids especially are from what I hear also really wonky in how they're coded, meaning things break way way easier. I'm not going to be one of those people who constantly complain about bugs in game though, because I understand that these things happen and the CT is very human just like us, so it's important to have patience and work together in reporting such issues. It's really just an unfortunate position of the circumstances given.

• The Balancing and Design

I think it's safe to say that raids, sans guild wars, are likely the highest difficulty medium of content currently in game. But maybe not for the reasons that most people would desire. Raid mob stats are, for lack of better terms, quite inflated. And it's not hard to see as to why, but rather, it's been done in pretty poor fashion in conjunction with the actual layout of certain rooms and bosses. Raids require anything up from 3 to 6 players to even begin. With that many, for the most part, well equipped players, mob stats will need to be quite high to be a challenge. The issue arises when they're raised to such a degree, that, for the average player, playing with anything other than optimal EHP, the difficulty feels incredibly artificial. Getting one or two shot by most mobs, often times in crowded, smaller rooms, feels really bad to play. From a design perspective it's even worse, as when mobs and bosses are so incredibly strong they effectively lock players out of certain build archetypes, weapons and overall playstyles, replayability becomes incredibly limited. This isn't to say that using archetypes such as ETW is impossible, as I've done every raid in fully ETW. But when even the most minor of mistakes will lead to your death, especially with the current soul point system, players feel incredibly overwhelmed. I think this is almost sort of a direct problem with the way Wynn's item and building system functions as a whole. While incredibly complex and has even become its own sub-community of dedicated class-builders, the build system makes it hard for developers to effectively balance content evenly for all players, as no one player's build will always be the same. This wasn't too big an issue prior to raids, as content was mostly designed with single-player in mind (only major exception being guild wars and EO, which was quite literally the "beta-raid"). Perhaps my largest gripe is with how strong Defense and Agility are as a whole, especially in conjunction with the insane sustain of mage's heal. When you can inflate your own EHP stats dramatically and heal that much over the course of seconds, content can become trivial and leads to the effect of inflating mob stats.

• What's the deal with Raid Buffs?

A bit of a weird question. I know. But, I think it's important to ask when looking at how to properly balance and design raids. It's important to ask what their actual purpose and stance is in raids, as they majorly affect difficulty and balancing ESPECIALLY after the Strength/Dexterity changes. Are they intended to ease the difficulty of raids? Or are they meant to be considered in the balancing process? And how should they be changed, if at all?
Cherubim III is a power up that can essentially trivialize the entire NOL boss fight. It offers 140, defensive skill points, 140 offensive skill points (which are now even MORE potent post 1.20.3), and 70 intelligence to improve those costs even more. It's become such a make-or-break powerup in the game so significantly at this point, that often times players complain when they don't receive it as an option, or undergo the misconception that it's required to go through the boss fight. This isn't even the only example of a game-breaking powerup, either. Stonewalker III, Giant III, Intrepid 2 +3, and many more can easily make an entire raid a cakewalk single-handedly. I'd almost go as far to say that they're even more unbalanced than the mobs and bosses in raids themselves. That being said, we need to ask ourselves, what's their intention? If it's to merely ease the difficulty of raids, as one might assume, they're done in such a way it comes to down to a dice roll on whether you get a power up you want or not, and how easy/difficult your experience might be. I also personally think raids are incredibly difficult, and to have such unbalanced buffs available skews players' perceptions of how difficult they really can be. But, we can look at the question from other view points. What if raid buffs are actually MEANT to be considered when balancing and designing raids? This becomes even more problematic as when something RNG is intended to be considered, it makes the gameplay loop random. People will often suggest that every raid buff should be available to the player. However, I disagree. I think that, by offering every single available option to the player, it becomes easy to build entirely around whatever set of power-ups would be desirable, and make an unstoppable setup. This boils down to whether or not raid buffs are meant to be considered in the balancing process, which is unclear, as raid buffs are entirely handled by IMs, and the balancing is done by GMs. Personally, I wouldn't mind their removal as it would make things way clearer, but they serve as something to look at in the waiting rooms.

• What's the deal with Raid Rewards?

Perhaps the most important thing when designing content is not only how fun and replayable it is, but also the tangible rewards for doing so. And when we look at raid rewards, the most notable aspect being tomes, it ends up being really confusing. Players can receive raid-unique tomes, charms, amplifiers, and accessories upon completion, but also emerald blocks, horses, professions materials, and teleport scrolls. I think that, you can look at how raid rewards should be handled can go a variety of different ways. Should raids be primarily for their own unique drops, or be expanded upon further to encourage running them for differing activities such as being an actual source of raw emerald income, or supporting professions? Right now, it's a little bit of both and doesn't seem to do either too well. Personally, I love tomes as an idea and how they're intended to be the "next layer of progression" as we delve into higher level content and don't want to make current gear obscure. However, fabled tome drop rates in raids are awful. Charms can only be obtained once on each class (excluding NOTG) and criminally underutilized. Currently, they're only used as XP for NOTG and NOL, and loot bonus for TCC. I think way more interesting charms could be created, such as a charm that increases damage, a charm that gives the player a unique mobility option, or even more unique concepts at the cost of damage taken whilst being used. Right now though, they're incredibly uninteresting. I'd also dare say that raids should explore even more uniquely obtainable items, for example getting differing "crafting components" from differing raids to make a new sort of "charm" with a special effect. Because whilst being designed to be replayable, raids don't currently offer much incentive to actually DO so. Asides from raid-unique items, lootrunning is by far a more efficient "money-maker" than raids. I'm not too invested in professions myself so I can't personally speak on the topic myself, but raids being way more preferable to obtain specific tier 3 materials than gathering itself seems odd to me.

• Problems Fundamental to Wynn

Wynn has never really had a proper aggro-system and it definitely impacts raids the most more than all other forms of content. Unlike most other standard MMORPGs, it's difficult for Wynn to meet among the most basic roles that a team can have. It's definitely got damage dealers and healers, but tanks are, for the most part, non-existent or simply not useful to benefit a team as a role. It exists to an extent with the Guardian major ID, which is unfortunately mythic-locked. Taunt is also another major ID, but unfortunately only draws aggro from mobs for a very brief time period, and mobs will more often than not instantly re-aggro on another player seconds later. CCI is known to have many issues, all of which I've spoken about in the past. Just purely excluding CCI's design and how it's applied to various mobs/bosses, fundamentally, it is bad for team-based scenarios such as raids. Because CCI timers are one-note, and players have a wide array of spells with crowd-control effects, it's hard/impossible for the most effective effects to actually apply. Ice snake, for example, will almost never have its superior slow applied to a boss like Orphion when an archer or warrior is in the party. Both of these classes utilize bash/arrow bomb in their spell cycles for DPS, and both of which have inferior slowness effects. Wynn's telegraphing system is also awful. It entirely consists of a white circle that appears at an enemy's feet, and doesn't distinguish what spell is about to be cast unless you literally memorize the boss' spell patterns. When you have 3+ players all casting multiple spells at a time, the amount of particles makes it incredibly difficult to see the bare-bones telegraph.

I'll probably gradually add on to this list once I remember/think of more gripes I have with raids.

More detailed break-downs of raid challenge rooms and bosses
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Here, I'll go over each individual challenge room and boss in NOL and TCC. I won't be doing NOTG because it isn't nearly as relevant nor do I have enough experience in it. I did it a couple times at level on shaman and for the most I was actually pleasantly surprised by the balancing except for the first "tower" room. The boss is also incredibly repetitive and long.

• Orphion's Nexus of Light

Spoiler: Platform Room

Overall, I'm actually quite happy with the design of this room. One party member must stand on the central tower platform to count down the room timer, and as the time goes down, parasites spawn that must be killed or else the entire party suffers a dangerous throw into the sky. I think it encourages teamwork quite nicely as a healer can support whatever player stands on the platform, and the other members can focus on killing parasites and the mobs with pull spell that will attempt to drag the central member down. Archers can even solo the entire room single handedly as they can also kill every parasite from the tower itself. The only major issue is, something that I will bring up often throughout all of these breakdowns, the flying mobs. Every class other than archer will struggle with dealing them whilst standing on the platform due to lack of reach, and are often forced to just tank the damage. I think they should be brought closer to the tower and drastically nerfed so as to where all classes can effectively deal with them. All in all, it does "encouraged" rather than forced teamwork quite well.

Spoiler: Decaying Clouds Room

I really don't like this room. While players are given jump heights to deal with flying mobs, at least one person has to stand on a platform to count the timer down, and if not an archer, will be forced to rely on their teammates who also may be unable to effectively to deal with the flying mobs, or just facetank the damage altogether. Unique teamwork options aren't really encouraged here, and is one of the prime examples of why I hate flying mobs so much.

Spoiler: Clouds Room

Incredibly average/uninteresting room. No major flaws, and teamwork isn't really forced nor encouraged. I think, similar to some more rooms I will talk about later, it would be infinitely better with more mob diversity. If individual clouds had their own unique set of mobs instead of all having the same mobs, differing classes/setups would be more prone to deal with any individual cloud, allowing for more unique setups.

Spoiler: Resource Room

I don't like resource rooms as a concept in raids. In general they encourage individual strength over team strength, and are a drastic change of pace that isn't always for the better. There really isn't any major threat, and mainly serves as a way to cram a ton of minigames into the raid, which some people might actually enjoy in all fairness. The parkour is ok, the miniboss is unintuitive and fairly non-lethal, and the crystal minigame is boring and uninteresting. The two former are especially bad in raid settings, as multiple players are either straight up not allowed or not optimal.

Spoiler: Darkness Crystal Room

Not a bad room. Akin to the platform room, one player is forced to take the stage and it's up to their teammates to support them. It does a good job by showing each class' strengths and weaknesses here, as archers have high DPS, warriors and ESPECIALLY shamans can crowd control in the tight space, mages can heal/slow, and assassins can blind. I do think it would be improved by more mob diversity, as excluding the two ending minibosses, mobs are consistently the same throughout.

Spoiler: "Pog" Room

Oh boy, where do I even begin with this one. Probably the most unique room of all in the entire raid, it suffers a ton from class disparity, lack of a timer to increase urgency and the ever-present issue with flying mobs. First off, this room would benefit greatly from a round timer, or alternative to force players to actually make haste. It's incredibly easy to cheese the entire room by simply waiting for the path to appear, avoiding the main difficulty of having to gradually make your way through the maze and dealing with mobs at the same time. Secondly, class disparity is incredibly apparent here. Assassins cannot utilize their primary spell in vanish, and warriors and shamans cannot optimally deal with flying thunder clouds. Archers can deal with all threats, and mages still offer utility in healing, but not every team has the same composition nor these two specific classes. Really really unique and interesting room but plagued with some fatal flaws.

Spoiler: The Orphion Boss Fight

Phase 1: Orphion, The Light Beast

This one I've talked about all too much, it can be an incredibly enjoyable fight or either a player's worst nightmare. First, there's probably no bigger example of "inflated mob stats" in raids than in here. The most common complaint of this fight are the seemingly "random" one shots and deaths. In order to make raids difficult, mob stats were largely inflated, and Orphion is probably the biggest offender as, combined with three other issues, he is incredibly difficult to manage and avoid attacks and "one-shots" efficiently. He is incredibly fast which is an interesting trait, except for that it largely knocks builds with low mobility out of the question (unless you're building hypertank). I've brought it up that, with the CCI changes, having low knockback/slowness timers could help alleviate the fact and allow for more interesting niches of certain classes in the boss fight, but I've already talked about how CCI is fundamentally flawed in raids. Next up, Orphion has a massive white model, which, combined with the spell particles of 4 separate players, makes it nearly impossible to see the standard white circle telegraph that I've discussed why is an issue, leading to the layer of "randomness" that players describe during this boss fight. Looking at the other boss fight mechanics, they're all quite interesting to talk about. Another major complaint of the fight is the large number of mobs spawned, which is the primary source of lag during the fight. A fair criticism, but looking at each individual mobs' purpose in the fight, I think they're all quite well done. Volatile velocities are the standard "foot-trooper" and are fast but with low HP. Infection ad infinitum, the source of the many ghast mobs, acts as a sort of body-block for the boss and other mobs. There are also various healers that should be dealt with as soon as possible. I think all the mobs have unique attributes that add on to the fight, but I'd agree in that they need to drastically turn down the numbers down. Now let's look at the most controversial topic: crystallization. And I'll say it, I like it as a mechanic. While it is a blatant example of "forced" teamwork, it adds on to the atmosphere that raids ARE a team environment, plus it's told to you in advance so it almost feels fair in a way. It also means game-over in the scenario one player is left, but this is already being looked at thankfully. I just wish it'd have its own on-screen indicator like crystal launch, and the lightning strike. Speaking of which, crystal launch adds on to the RNG aspect that so many players dislike, of which I'd agree to especially in how it unfairly targets one of archer's main weaknesses, but I like that acts as a sort of "fight disruptor" to keep it fresh. I don't know how I'd change it. Lightning and blood ruin also serve to keep the players on their toes (even though Orphion already does this), and aren't too big of threats should you be paying attention. One thing that this boss fight does especially well is how every class is equal during it, with their specific attributes being highlighted individually. Warriors are sort of generalists who can deal with everything quite well, archers are the high DPS, assassins can spinlock the boss, mage can heal/slow, and shaman completely destroys the mobs.

Phase 2: The Parasite, Harbringer of Decay

A weird phase that has a great goal in mind, but with flawed execution. Yes, I almost like the idea of the parasite phase, and how it works for a team environment. During this portion of the fight, it can effectively be described as a "DPS-check" meaning you have to kill it within in a certain time frame to optimally play it. There is no actual time limit in play here, but this entire concept comes from looking at the Sanitizing Void. Periodically, the sanitizing void will pull in one player as it unleashes an extremely hard-hitting block attack with true damage that can kill most builds. So, you're on a timer of how long you have to kill the parasite until more and more players are dragged into the void, or you can have players dedicated to dealing with it. There are legitimate consequences to losing party members during Orphion, which is why I think phase is actually incredibly well designed. My only major problem, though, is how the Parasite is basically the most annoying mob ever designed. The teleport spells actually function nicely to add to its personality and theme of the fight as a DPS check, but its rapid-fire ranged shotgun attack is awful to play against.

Ultimately, this boss suffers from fundamental flaws of raids and the game, being poor CCI implementation, lack of aggro, poor telegraphs, and inflated stats.

• The Canyon Colossus

Spoiler: Resource Room

Same issues from NOL's resource room are applied here. However, I think the minigames here are way more well done than in NOL. Minibosses are better, more interesting parkour, and actually forces urgency with resource decay.

Spoiler: Lava Lake Room

Fundamentally identical to NOL's platform room, and does the same concept quite well just slightly differently. Again, one player is forced to take the stage whilst the others must do a series of tasks to progress the timer. Archers can help deal with the flying mobs and healers can support whoever is standing on the platforms. That being said, it suffers the exact same problem with NOL's platform room. Flying mobs. However, it does it better! Warriors' uppercut/bash, mage's meteor, assassin's spin can all reach the flying mobs. Shaman and melee builds however, are out of luck.

Spoiler: 3 Passageways

The most infamous raid room of all time. It's no surprise why this room is so resented. Encourages individual strength rather than team power, and with two deaths the raid ends. The limited space of the platforms means the fight boils down to an endurance test, as archer as a class cannot utilize its fundamental strength in being able to avoid damage entirely. The two mobs, stalagmite crystals and runaway flerisi, have arrow storm and flamethrower respectively, which are designed as AOE effect spells except for the fact that the player now has limited mobility options and are forced to tank. Shaman especially suffers as, given how high the platforms are, aura actually cannot reach mobs on top when placed at ground-level. Meaning, you either have to place it on top of the platform dragging mobs to you (very bad idea as a shaman), or are forced to put your totem on grass blocks parallel to the platform to allow aura to reach, which is the most optimal way to play. This room would be greatly enhanced with mob diversity, encouraging more unique teamplay options.

Spoiler: Maze Room

Very solid challenge room. One player is forced to search for the exit with wings, while the others can either wait or go down more paths to more effectively search. It encourages teamwork quite nicely as players can coordinate which colors they are searching, and while this is often a complaint of players, I actually appreciate the mob spam in this room. If a player is strong enough, they can individually search a path, or multiple players need to work together to go down. I think this room would greatly benefit from a timer, as it's easy to wait out for wings to find the path. I do however, think the strength of mobs can be toned down significantly though, as this room hits even harder than 3 passageway.

Spoiler: 2 Platforms

Similar issues to 3 passageway but to a lesser degree. Now you can more freely disperse players to the two different platforms but the problem of it being an endurance test is an even larger issue here. Mobs are way stronger and more plentiful with one even having complete knockback immunity, but thankfully you have a bit more space to work with here. Again, this room would greatly benefit from mob diversity between the two sections so as to where more teamplay options and strengths are available. Mobs here definitely need to be tuned way down.

Spoiler: Golem Room

What can I say, I actually like this room. Does encouraged teamwork incredibly well, as while mobs are all the same here, players can help each other out in this way more spacious room. Mobs completely lack CCI, meaning you're free to go ham with your special crowd control debuffs while focusing the harder hitting mobs, and occasionally dealing with the zombie threat. The mob spawn rate can and should definitely be brought down though.

Spoiler: The Colossus Boss Fight

Phase 1: The Defense System

I'm not gonna say too much here because this phase is incredibly similar to phase 2 with not nearly as many interesting details. There aren't too many notable or significant differences here to phase 2, except for a few ranged "mine" attacks that target the outer ring of the arena which can mess with archers which I think is pretty good.

Phase 2: The Colossal Head

Where I'll talk about most of the aspects of the fight since is the "main" phase. This fight seemingly took inspiration from the Eye, but altered it or added new aspects to it that ultimately worsened the experience. First of, the arena. The arena in this boss fight is actually pretty cool and fits the theme of the boss quite well, but it amplifies the main issue I have with this fight: lack of options. The floating platforms add an interesting dynamic, but they end up heavily screwing classes such as shaman and assassin. Both of these classes are heavily movement-reliant. Shamans need to play around their totem and haul over enemies, but the floating platforms with gaps in between, combined with the fact that the boss is stationary in one predefined location, means that you cannot abuse your main strength in crowd control, and that you are forced to haul in suboptimal locations. Speaking of being stationary, this boss has most of its segments suspended midair, meaning that the same two classes, shaman and assassin, will suffer greatly. Assassin is forced to vanish jump midair to land multihits on the boss' segments, which cripples DPS and limits your range of mobility, and shaman in phase 2 is forced to throw its totem within the colossal eyes to land aura, which means you can't really use haul or you'll just be launched into the boss headfirst. The boss itself is a massive conglomeration of spell spam which leaves very few actual opportunities to attack, especially for the closer ranged classes like warrior and assassin, or just any melee build. When your spell combo is a constant cycle of heavy arrow storm and explosion, players are limited in when they can and cannot attack. I do, however, think that this boss fight does encouraged teamwork amazingly akin to the Parasite. It is 100% a solo-able boss fight, but having multiple players makes it way more easier in not just simply having more healing and damage. Teammates can take the aggro of the boss' various segments at once (primary example is phase 2) making it way easier on any one given player. One last thing is how the boss summons two Colossal Cores, where upon being destroyed the nearest player becomes "chosen" and must survive to the end of the fight to solve a trivial "puzzle". This part feels like they needed to add something similar to Orphion's crystallization to force teamwork, but it is way less intuitive and doesn't add any diversity to the fight. This boss altogether kind of just relies on either more damage/healing as the main focus of the fight (with the exception being the next phase of which I'll tak about, with a lot less strategy than Orphion which is why I find it less enjoyable overall.

Phase 3: Damaged Colossal Head

Very unique phase that has similar issues to the previous two, but is ultimately an entirely different fight. All the issues of lack of options in mobility and spell spam are no longer present here, although the midair suspended boss segments are still present. Everything that can go wrong here is primarily attributed to the players, as it only ever attacks when you do. Whenever a segment receives damage, it "reflects" a projectile based on how many attacks it received. Meaning, "single strike" spells such as uppercut, bash, bomb arrow, meteor and uproot don't suffer nearly as much as spells that are centered around rapid constant attacks, meaning arrow storm, multihit and war scream. You can take this fight at whatever pace you want, giving you opportunities to break and heal. I don't really have any major complaints here.

What would I like to see changed or added?
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I love raids a lot. I wouldn't have done them as many times as I have if I didn't. I think I've done my best summarizing the primary issues of raids being buggy, poor balancing of mob stats due to EHP inflation and mage sustain within team environments, raid buffs being problematic, rewards not being rewarding enough, and more problems that are more fundamental to Wynn than simply just raids. Raids' falls aren't directly applicable to any one specific issue, but rather multiple. What we need is a proper aggro system with ways for tanks to more directly and clearly protect the team, better CCI implementation for team environments, and better telegraphs. Something new that's shown up in 1.20 is the "upcoming attack" mechanic. I love this and want to see it expanded upon way further. I've also been told that the tools used to create content for Wynn have also gotten way better, which would allow for more interesting and unique spells almost akin to the ones we saw in Wynncon. Raids would be a perfect place for such additions, as things like "upcoming attack" alone which is incredibly simple compared to spells in Wynncon are extremely refreshing to see in Wynn as they offer a way clearer telegraph and more dynamic spell for players to interact with. I'd love to see what they can add to raid bosses and bosses in general in the future. Overall, I think I'm happy with the overall general raid formula and while it can always be improved, it's one of the more solid foundations that we have. I used to talk about how I wanted to see more distinguishes between raids and dungeons, and we actually got a sneak peek at that recently! Modifiers would also be an amazing addition here, with examples being no raid buffs, something similar to Terraria's "expert mode", and more that can be specific to each individual raid. I'm also of the opinion that raids are too short, as they can easily be completed in under 10 minutes with semi-competent players. And again I feel must reiterate that I believe raids, or at least more or new forms of content, should increase what they actually reward the players by offering newer and unique types of items to work towards.



So, did I cover all the problems that people have with raids? What issues do you have with raids if at all? I asked around in the community in what people would like to see to revitalize endgame content and replayability, and more often than not people brought up more raids/more forms of replayable PvE content. So people obviously still like raids as a concept, it's just that there's so many factors in play as to why so many people dislike them. I'll try to respond to most questions that people have for me as I'm very invested into this game and would love to be able to help it grow.

 

One of the few things I wished wynncraft but more relevant to this topic in raids (TCC especially) is some visual indicator of a mob with a high/low level of reflection/thorns. This is most relevant to the ears of phase 3 of the TCC boss (I was told all of the parts have it but I've noticed it on the ears the mostly) as for unexperienced raid runners mainly archers using arrowstorm just explode during this phase due to their high reflection damage almost to the point that unless you have a reliable healer a spell focused archer may have to settle with an inferior melee just to survive that part of the raid. Also maybe if they can tone down the damage the ears do a tiny bit would be nice. even with reasonably high ehp for raids you still can't stand anywhere near them without having your life flash before your eyes.

There are a number of other things i'd like to note just in addition and other personal thoughts (ill probably forget all I wanted to say so I may tag them in addition when I think of them) on some of the raids.

2 things to note on this room. 1) Running this room with new players or less observant players tends to result in a lot of cycles where the room goes dark and the platform holder has to reset. If which crystals are decaying could be more visual (maybe a beacon beam or some guide) along with a on screen (not just chat) message and a visual timer telling exactly when they decay then I'd imagine that would ease most the troubles i've seen regarding this room. Also if we could reduce the 3 seconds to launch onto the middle to maybe 1.5 or 2 seconds I would be very happy and i'm sure others would be

This room also lies in a similar situation with the room I discussed prior. If the instructions were made more clear (they attempt by making the text in chat white, ALL CAPS, and Bold but clearly that isn't enough to explain exactly what needs to happen.

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In general I feel the biggest flaws I have with the raids is that it in someway is kind of impossible for a newcomer. Not in a challenge sense the scaling of it at level is another thing to talk about but that the information of what to be done in regards to each room or what is expected to be done isn't clear and the bits of instruction aren't able to be viewed and understood in time before you get launched by some mob or keel over and die.

 

This is actually a unique attribute applied to various “neutral” status mobs throughout the game in that upon receiving damage, they retaliate with a ranger attack of their own. Another good example of this is the neutral rare mob within the desert.

Overall I think the phase is well balanced as sans a few small ranged attacks from each individual segment, you are entirely free to take it at your own pace meaning that when you feel you might be in trouble you can simply just stop attacking and take a minute to heal. The phase is also incredibly cheesable with attacks that go through walls and even with spell archer, I was the one who discovered “safe spots” to be able to arrow storm each individual segment without fear of being hit by reflection. I’ll post these images when I do the raid on archer again (not currently at my computer as of writing this).

I feel it’s also worthy to note that I believe that a large part of the gameplay loop is actually undergoing a fight multiple times to be able to understand it more clearly and develop strategies over time. I don’t think it’s necessarily important to highlight that the mob has a large degree of “reflection” as it’s something you learn to try and avoid with experience. Granted, it’s definitely WAY more lethal going into blind than the previous 2 phases.

Clarity is definitely an issue that I forgot to talk about originally, and I would agree that raid challenge rooms are unlike anything the player has done prior and are often confusing for newer players and hard to get into it, but again I feel this almost falls into my same point regarding the gameplay loop but I feel that if the instructions for each challenge rooms were also printed in the chat upon entering, it would be a fair compromise.

 

Hot take: Raids should have just been dungeons. This isn't a joke, I'm dead seirous.

There are only two mechanical differences between raids and dungeons; The buffs and the random chambers, neither of which add anything to the experience. The random rooms takes away from the experience because instead of getting one, well thought out, properly developed experience, It's just three random content rooms with no cohesion or logic behind their order with identical filler buff rooms to connect them. All that makes for a horribly paced experience because you don't ever get any down time like you would in a parkour room for a regular dungeon.

As for the mandatory party thing, that's also dumb, I get they want people to play together but the way to do that isn't by forcing people to play together, it's just a pain, if I want to do something I don't want to wait for others, I just want to do it.

I said this when they were first announced, during the beta and in my 1.20 review but raids feel like they're different for the sake of being different and not because it actually adds anything.

As a side note, most of the raids just look bland or bad most of the time. CC and Grootslang are just such boring locations, I get that they're supposed to be natural areas but why chose to make a raid there in that case? This is a game where the moon is a place you can go, there's a tower where everything flips upside down and there's a void hellscape which is basically empty, I refuse to accpect that the best places for 2/3rds of the raids in this game are in generic canyon cave and generic hole.

 

This is definitely something that I should’ve gone over and that I forgot to include when writing this thread (I’ll add more when I’m at a computer). I 100% agree that there needs to be a more clear distinction between the purposes of both raids and dungeons regarding overall structure and design, but saying there are only two clear distinctions between the two seems unfair. First of all, raids are way more team objective based (who would’ve thought) than dungeons, which are more often than not testing individual combat strength against mobs with varying parkour segments. I think, there’s already quite a clear distinction between being forced to kill X mob X times and actually having to work towards completing an objective. Again, among my favorite challenge rooms are NOL’s first tower platform room, and TCC’s golem room. Both of these rooms do “encouraged” over “forced” teamwork perfectly and are how raids should be designed comparatively to dungeons. That being said, we need to ask ourselves, how should dungeons be designed if raids already have their own unique identity? Dungeons have a much “looser” formula than raids, as they can range from token rooms, parkour, to completely unique gameplay segments like GG’s boat defense. Me personally, I believe dungeons should largely go in the latter most direction, with unique mini games incorporated with combat that are thematic with the corresponding dungeon. I also think they should be larger and more “exploration” based, but at this point I’m discussing my own personal opinions over the differences between raids and dungeons. Raids also have a completely unique reward pool to dungeons, with the main rewards being tomes compared to dungeons’ gear. And as for the “forced party” aspect, this starts to boil down to peoples’ own opinions regarding Wynn as an MMORPG. Should we incorporate more multiplayer aspects? Or stay largely single player as it has been? Also I personally like the theming of all the raids, but this is starting to become entirely subjective.

 

Going to start from the bottom and make my way up;

The raid reward pool is different but it's also so, so much worse. The big reward are Tomes which were and are still a horrible addition to the game, they're entirely devoid of creativity and it locks a staggering amount of combat power behind multiplayer only content which is honestly just horrible game design for a game that is otherwise entirely functional as a single player game. Don't even get me started on Tomes and how bad they are on every level, I could write for hours on all the issues with them. The other rewards are emeralds (of course), resources (which are borderline useless), horses (which are basically useless since at that point you're more likely to sell them) and random charms/accessories which are either good or completely useless. Dungeons give you a choice which is why their reward system is so good, if their shops were done right (which of course they're not, for some reason), there could theoretically always be a reason to keep running them, the fact that raids are completely random means you're never progressing towards getting what you want, you're just doing it for another roll of the dice for that mythic tome.

As for the format, dungeons shouldn't be changed to give raids an identity, raids should have to stand out enough to justify being a separate thing. There are dungeons which have random rooms (SST/CSST) and it's why they're some of the best dungeons in the game, the difference is their rooms are randomized but are still the same type of content, a parkour room might have different platforms but it'll always be parkour. There's consistency within the randomness which is something raids don't have and is something extremely desirable. There's also no reason why a dungeon couldn't have buff rooms or something, the randomness and buff thing being a raid exclusive concept isn't something that's good for raids to stand out, it's something that's bad for dungeons since it closes off doors for no reason beyond a pointless distinction so they can say there's more than just dungeons in the game.

You can like the theming, but that doesn't change the fact that neither of the themes are unique to the raid. FF is the only place in the game like it, EO, though similar to parts of the SE, is still the only place in the game quite like it, even though there are a few quests where you explore desert tombs, SST is really the only place where you can keep going back to to do that, GG is a haunted pirate ship, not every dungeon is completely unique but they all at least have a theme which is somewhat unique to them. CC is literally just the canyon of the lost, you could take a screenshot from there and CC and they would look the same, that's an issue considering the canyon makes up like 1/3rd of Gavel. Grootslang is just brown so my issue is less with it not being unique and more with it being ugly and lifeless. You're right though, that's all just my opinion.

As for the team objectives, I get that, I really do, but almost every objective is combat based to some degree because they need to show off the buffs and half the objectives require you splitting up the gang to look for clues anyways so I don't see what the point of assembling the Scooby gang is half the time anyways. The only really team based objective I can think of is the CC maze but that's more of a test of patience. You also mentioned testing parkour but the only parkour sections I've seen in raids are individual challenges in the token rooms, there's no team parkour at all.

Finally, I want to double down on saying there are only two clear distinctions because nothing you said has convinced me otherwise. Even when it comes to team work, dungeons like UR and CUR have some sections like the towers which can be done faster as a team. On the other side of things, how many rooms in raids could theoretically be done solo? First, if the decay on tokens didn't exist all those could be done solo, almost every combat challenge could be done solo, really, the only challenges which can't be done solo are the ones which were specifically tweaked to require multiple people because they realized that they were basically just making a dungeon. There's nothing about raids which clearly shows you need a team, it's almost all just superficial stuff like having 4 statues to defend, mobs with 4x hp, decaying tokens, 2 pressure plates instead of 1, ect. Raids are dungeons but worse with multiple people and that's all they are.

If they wanted to make multiplayer only content they should have done that by making the exclusive reward the fun times with others, not raw combat power, they should have added in more fundamentally multiplayer challenges (think portal 2 multiplayer) and they shouldn't have made a bunch of arbitrary distinctions between raids and dungeons. Ultimately, raids shouldn't exist and instead dungeons should have been given a multiplayer version where rooms are retooled into more raid like challenges while keeping their structure.

 

Throwback to Charles Witherton Raid on Mineplex Clans :(

Great points which I'm too lazy to fully analyse at this moment - saving my space in the comments though should I decide to ;).

Class disparity and lack of strategy to overcome mechanics is what bothers me the most.

 

Bump. Edited and added some things and tried to make my thoughts clearer.

I semi agree here. I don't like the current raid reward chest item pool, and feel it should be expanded upon further. Not going to mention your thoughts on "multiplayer-locked content" because Wynn is advertised and functional as an MMORPG, but simply has been primarily single player for years. That's ok. You can like that. That is your opinion but frankly, that's all I see it as. I don't really think there's any reason as to why we shouldn't add more content that actually fits the game's intentions. But I digress. This is an argument for another day, another time, that I frankly do not care for. I think tomes, while linear in design, are great as a form of progression because they allow us enter higher level content with upscaled progression without making the majority of the item pool irrelevant. Charms or more unique concepts for items can help fill that space for more dynamic progression. They just currently aren't expanded upon. I don't see how resources are useless at all, but I agree in that horses only serve as another item to sell on the market (which I don't think is inherently a bad thing to add? it's just that there isn't much actually unique which I've said multiple times now).

I never said that dungeons should be changed because of raids, but rather, that raids already have their own unique identity that only slightly encroaches on what dungeons were, and that it's about time that dungeons get their own formula and more coherent design, which we are actually seeing now for the new update!!! But we'll still have to wait and see. SST/CSST do have a layer of variability, yes, but it's not nearly as much as what we see in raids. And please don't put words into my mouth. I've already spoke of how much I dislike buff rooms, nor have I ever claimed that their randomness is what actually distinguishes them as being unique? I only stated that buff rooms having random option is necessary for balancing.

ok. cool

Yes, objectives can be revolved around combat, but they can still be centered around completing one specific goal. Claiming that combat is introduced solely to show off buffs is... an interesting hill to die on as I don't think this is even close to the case of why either exist. Yes, TCC separates players in a handful of its challenge rooms, but most are still pretty connected and NOL never splits up party members. Yea, I mentioned that parkour does sometimes in happen in raids, but that's only ever during resource rooms which I've gone on to say I hate. Nor do I really think team parkour should be a thing...?

What am I trying to convince you of...? I'm offering my feedback and suggestions for raids and their design. Nothing more nothing less. This "teamwork" you mention for UR and CUR, like the towers being done faster, is not teamwork. Doing something slightly faster because you have another person isn't really a unique and dynamic experience for multiple players, it's just a task you have to complete. Yea, there are quite a few challenge rooms that can be done solo. But you missed the point entirely. It's not always about "forced" teamwork, it's about creating challenges that test the strengths and weakness of multiple players and encourages them to work towards in unique ways. You clearly describe TCC's golem room here with the 4 statues, but as I've talked about it, it does a great job at being an actual team environment, with a few flaws albeit. Your main focus is defending the golems from zombie mobs, with having two differing mobs that will focus down the players. They have 0 CCI, meaning you can you work together in interesting ways. Every player can help each other against these mobs, and all the mobs spawn in different rates/locations across the arena at set time intervals. At any point one area of the map might become more crowded and dangerous than the rest, and it's up to the team to clear it before it becomes a threat. Another great example is NOL's tower room, where I can definitely do the entire thing as an archer standing on the platform by myself. But it becomes infinitely more intuitive when I factor in having teammates. Any one member with a different class/build can take the platform, and depending on their strengths and weakness, can react accordingly. An archer is great up there as they can deal with the flying mobs and snipe parasites, but they are weaker and might require the aid of a healer. Assassins can jump up and blind/kill the flying enemies to support a warrior without reach, and teammates on the bottom also have to focus on parasites and mobs that might attempt to pull the player on the platform down. It's not necessarily a matter of IF something is possible solo, but how the design works in a way to make it interesting for a full team.

You're describing raids as if "raw combat power" and "fun times with your friends" are mutually exclusive. A good half of my nearly 2000 raids now are all spent with my friends, playing both seriously and joking around. There can be more content centered around just hanging with friends, of course, but it's not like raids actively deter from such experiences. Challenge rooms do offer such fundamentally multiplayer challenges like how you previously mentioned TCC's maze room, but yes, I'm also very aware that there are also many bad challenge rooms and they can definitely be more intuitive with their design in the future. Again, fundamentally these are simply just two different forms of content. It's not like either is actively making the other worse with how they're made. I suppose we'll have to wait and see where their new take on dungeons for the next major update leads.

 

Going to keep this brief since I know people don't like when I type out essays as responses;

Almost every MMO is playable as a single player experience and any content in those games which requires a party comes with built in match making, something which Wynn does not have. That's the problem. I'm not against needing to play with others, I'm against needing to arrange a party ahead of time even if it's less of a pain because of the party finder. Wynn also has a relatively small playerbase, an issue which other MMO's don't have to compete with but Wynn really does. If I log in at any given time, there is a very real possibility that if I'm on my own I won't be able to find a raid team in a reasonable amount of time, much less a competent raid team. Saying that it's fine because other MMO's do it isn't a strong argument considering it just sidesteps the potential issues rather than addressing the unique circumstances.

I never said you said that, I pointed out that the identity you want raids to have, no matter what that identity is, was never an identity dungeons couldn't have before. There weren't limits on what a dungeon could be before because dungeons could literally be anything, now that raids need to be unique it requires dungeons to lose some freedom on what they can be. I was very clear about thinking raids had no unique identity because there isn't anything in raids that didn't exist before in dungeons in some capacity which is my entire argument; raids shouldn't exist because they're no different from dungeons.

With that in mind, the fact that you would read what I wrote, then made a pitch about how to split them up going entirely against my entire thesis with no supporting arguments for why your pitch would be a better alternative is honestly confusing.

I also didn't put words in your mouth, I'm not really sure why you would think I did when at no point has this argument ever been about your opinion on the existing distinctions between, it was an argument about the existing distinctions and if there really are any and if there should be any. I don't care whether or not you like buff rooms or the randomness, I'm arguing with you because I think raids are one of the worst content additions in the games history and while I'm trying to promote the idea that raids should just be worked into dungeons you're pitching ways to double down. You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but the idea that I would try and invoke your opinion to help my case in what I see as an objective argument is kind of insane.

Lmao okay, I'm honestly not sure about how you came to the conclusion I was picking that hill to die on, but also if you're going to disagree with the idea that the heavy use of combat against otherwise extremely strong monsters is there to show off buffs you should really have some other alternative reason to bring to the table. I'm curious, why do you think the game gives you exclusively combat oriented buffs if it isn't to use them? Are they there just for show or maybe it's because they want you to feel more powerful in combat and the only way to do that is to get you to fight things...

NOL not splitting up the party makes it an exception. As of now, 2/3 raids frequently split the party.

You don't make a general suggestion and an argument to a reply if you're not trying to persuade people. You made a pitches for what raids should look like as a solution to a list of issues you outlined right before, you're trying to convince people to agree with your outlook. I could flip that and ask why you felt compelled to disagree with my perspective if you weren't trying to convince me to agree with you. The entire point of discussion and debate is to communicate arguments to try and convince people to agree with you.

If you lack the self awareness to realize that you made an argument in your initial post and actively contributed to debate I really don't know what to say.

When I said raw combat power, I wasn't referring to the raid, I was referring to tomes... The fact that you ran 2000 raids is helping my point because you don't run raids 2000 times for tomes, you're doing it because you're having fun with friends. There's no reason why tomes in their entirety* should have been locked behind content who's main focus should have been having fun with friends.

*Yes, I know guild tomes exist, it's like 1 slot of 14, they hardly matter. Also, guilds fall into the same category of fun with friends so it's not like it makes much of a difference.

 

Saving space in the comments for a really well thought out reply ;)

 

Something I should add is that Raids are often punishing on failure. This may have been changed since I last played, but if your party wipes, you get booted from the raid and have to re-enter it while spending runes. This doesn't contribute to the difficulty of the content at all and it really only leads to frustration and lots of time wasted, especially since raids have an entry cost. Instead, if the party wipes, they should be allowed to attempt the entire raid again from the beginning or the last room they died on until they beat it. The only limiters on this would be the team's soul points (which is a whole other can of worms and is a Wynn-wide problem) and the party's time commitment to actually finishing the raid after wiping. It also reduces the harm done if the party wipes because of raid bugs or some other situation not involving the content of the raid.

tl;dr: party wipes shouldn't forcefully end a raid attempt.

 

Interesting idea. I don't think the current system is that punishing besides the fact that it should warn the party about how many players have to die in a room before the raid will end. It was frustrating to not know the limit, so even when people were still alive the raid would still end, which was completely unexpected. Not to mention, this value changes between each room, so you have no idea whether the room will end on 2 or 3 or all 4 players dying. However, I also don't think it should just be free to reattempt the raid even after you fail. Maybe some implementation in the middle would allow you to retry the the raid at the current room, for reduced rune price?

 

Common Wynncraft L

 

I mean nothing is perfect :3

 

I think what they were going for was to make the raids more replayable by changing up your build. They remind me of items in the Binding of Isaac; and just like in Isaac, certain items are broken. Which I why I think raid buffs need to be significantly toned down and make them have trade offs so they’re aren’t free win buttons.

 

Honestly on just a short while thinking on this the idea of the raid buffs with series of drawbacks would solve much of my issues regarding some raids being super easy to steamroll. Just for me as an individual as much as I like to win raids for the rewards I gain more satisfaction from when a party clears a raid after a hard fought/lengthy battle (usually aided by added server restart stress thanks pfinder) versus when one guy shows up with a tierstack collapse or singularity build and shred all the phases of the boss within 30 seconds all because they got ideal buffs without any drawbacks because the boss dies too fast to attack back *cough cough tcc Stone walker*.

Having some form of risk versus reward or as you said tradeoff for each buff I feel could remedy that situation while still keeping access to those scale of buffs for those that need them to survive the raid. Just for a off the hand example take the Stonewalker buff in TCC. Currently its the go to for high melee dps with melee% and raw combined with exploding and even bits of survivability with 60 def. How about somewhere for example SW2 included is a large negative hpr ID or high negative lifesteal to make it so they either have to be healed constantly or risk death or take a breather, maybe chug a potion or two then get back into the fight once again. The same could also apply to the giant perk making it so either movement is extremely restricted via negative walkspeed, or in a more punishing aspect because people use statue so walkspeed isnt a problem make it so their movement spell costs 3x as much or something like so. You could also make it so that a dedicated tank alongside its Giant path gets heavy negatives in melee and spell damage if so chosen. Idk just spitting ideas now.

What I think comes best off this idea would be the expansion of choice right now the choices are if you want dps you go the dps route or if you want def go the def route but sometimes your build wants more dps but cant deal with a negative regen so you have to either rely more on a teammate who can support you or hand the main dps role to someone else for a section or a tank who would normally pick all def to be invincible opting for less ehp so they can move around better due to a perk now having restrictive spell costs. Heck if you wanted to you could develop a build that can survive the whole raid without any buffs if you feel the positives of getting perks wouldn't be worth the negatives you'd receive from them.

Again this is all just me spitting ideas and personal opinions but this post got some gears moving so I wanted to say some thoughts on it.