Too much damage

[Fluffball]

Ok, at like 11:08, they are fighting the spider boss thing. He does get hit twice, one for maybe 500, then for the rest of his health. That particular one does seem a bit excessive. It wasn't attacking him, but then turned, hit hims once, then a second time, downing him.

This may be the time, I'll look at it when I get home from work. Actually no I won't I'll be at the gym until bedtime. I'll take a look tomorrow. I'm fairly certain the time that inspired the thread there was no preliminary hit first, I rewound it a few times looking for any warning signs the guy was going to die. Maybe I missed the mini-hit though.

The funny thing is, TB was talking about how bosses will randomly attack various party members.

I hope your theory about armor breaking is correct; you would be 1-hit killed by about anything in GW1 with no armor. Hopefully TBs camera man was not THAT stupid to do a dungeon boss with no armor.

[Alaris]

I like how in fps games, you often see a boss (or whatever) perform its lethal attack on some other poor schmuck. So you get to learn about it before being confronted by it, so it's fair to expect you to know how to deal with it when you face that foe (or die if you didn't get the message the first time).

Telegraphing a move properly so it's understood the first time is quite possible, but difficult to pull off well.

[Simply Kedde]

How do you realistically propose to make the hardest content in the game hard at all if not by giving it overwhelming amounts of damage? I know full and well it's not the ideal way of dealing with difficulty and challenge, but again as I've said before I don't expect anything else given current technology.

It's supposed to be hard. If your entire team is allowed to collectively make 10 mistakes in a row and not take a single death from that against a boss in what is basically hardmore elite content. Then what is the challenge in it? What's to keep average joe who is terrible and his 4 buddies from waltzing straigth through it? Because he and his friends certainly aren't supposed to.

I like how in fps games, you often see a boss (or whatever) perform its lethal attack on some other poor schmuck. So you get to learn about it before being confronted by it, so it's fair to expect you to know how to deal with it when you face that foe (or die if you didn't get the message the first time).

Telegraphing a move properly so it's understood the first time is quite possible, but difficult to pull off well.

This you see in story mode the first time around is what I'd be expecting.

Is it also so wrong to have part of a boss challenge revolving around 1 random team member likely getting downed and then having to res him while still fighting? You see why he died and then avoid the **** out of that happening again.

[bearsfwd]

I hope your theory about armor breaking is correct; you would be 1-hit killed by about anything in GW1 with no armor. Hopefully TBs camera man was not THAT stupid to do a dungeon boss with no armor.

Well, he had armor on, but he had respawned at the waypoint a few times prior to fighting the spider, so he may have had one or two broken pieces. Who knows, that one or two pieces could make all the difference in a boss fight.

There may also have been some other factors that we couldn't see. But until we experience it for ourselves, we can only make assumptions

[Alaris]

Yes, but my point is that you can have 1 shot kills, or you can just increase normal damage enough that you can't heal it unless you do dodge a good amount of it. Can you dodge this? Ok, maybe you got lucky... can you do it again 10 times?

You could even have degen that is just 1 pip stronger than what you can heal, and that could end up a really difficult challenge.

[Fluffball]

Well, he had armor on, but he had respawned at the waypoint a few times prior to fighting the spider, so he may have had one or two broken pieces. Who knows, that one or two pieces could make all the difference in a boss fight.

Hurt myself so I'm not at the gym. I thought they all worked until all pieces were broken. Can you repair armor in the field? The party (including 3 devs if I remember right) completely party wiped 8 or so times, plus more individual deaths on the final boss. So I really hope you can repair armor in the field...

[Jez]

Your armour works until its broken completely so it takes 7 wipes before you lose a piece of your armour unless you replace a "cracked" or broken piece of gear before then. I'm sure they will have some npc in the game that will repair your armour strategically placed so you won't have to go long if you break it in a dungeon.

[Simply Kedde]

Yes, but my point is that you can have 1 shot kills, or you can just increase normal damage enough that you can't heal it unless you do dodge a good amount of it. Can you dodge this? Ok, maybe you got lucky... can you do it again 10 times?

You could even have degen that is just 1 pip stronger than what you can heal, and that could end up a really difficult challenge.

Again, why are they supposed to stop at that early a point? Only go to the point where you can't just indefinitely tank? I mean wtf. That's not a challenge worthy of any respect at all. A tough challenge is one that is extremely unforgiving, taxing on a mechanical level and requires a strategic level of knowledge beforehand and enough adaptability to survive unknowns and surprises. There's no reason to expect tough endgame fights to be ones where you're able to sustain for a long time, even if you're able to dodge. Part of a good challenge are limitations such as having to simply kill **** before it can completely wipe your team out.

[raspberry jam]

This is an interesting discussion...

Personally, I don't like one-hit kills. I reason that while mistakes should lead to loss, they should be fair. Simply being a random casualty isn't a mistake. Study the boss in the clip. Around 11:13+ he does a one-hit kill... Does he telegraph the 6940-damage hit? Not with any obviously visible effect. He punches forward with his front legs. The strike itself is very fast, I'd say too fast for an average player to dodge. So what is the mistake here? Not having some protection spell or something up? Well, but does reliable protection magic of that kind exist in a game supposedly without tanking? Or is the mistake simply standing in front of the boss when he is in melee range? Maybe. After all, the spider does turn toward the PC shortly before the hit. Was the he supposed to skirt around it? If he was, then it's a fair one-hit kill. If not, then I don't see how this is anything more than the normal "oh you rolled a 1 and died".

Interestingly enough, there is another guy with an axe and a shield, standing directly behind the spider when it hits. That guy does (seemingly) nothing. What is he there for? Trying to block the spider from going somewhere? Or maintaining some protection/circle (banner of whatever it's called)?

[Alaris]

@Kedde: my point, which you entirely missed, is that you can easily make something really challenging without using one-shot kills.

@jam: The problem is that even if the devs think it's fair, or it's mechanically fair, the problem remains that once the player gets there and sees the boss telegraph its move for the first time, he won't know what to do, and if he gets one-shotted as a results this is frustrating. Yes, no issues with that in the long run, but that's just it... one-shots are unforgiving because they don't teach.

Those who should be punished aren't those who don't know. It's those who don't learn.

The most interesting fights are when you don't initially know what you're supposed to do, but you figure it out during the fight.