Monday Mechanics Weekly Discussion: Raiding

The most basic raid boss in the game, the Dragon, which launched with the game, had more AI than a lot of modern raid bosses, because it actually reacted to multiple things, and wasn't hard coded scripted to expect specific classes and combinations and gear.

The Dragon you're referring to had extremely basic AI. The fight was ridiculously simple as well. Most raid fights aren't "hard coded scripted to expect specific classes and combinations and gear" now either, so I don't know what that is supposed to mean. Does it mean that you have no idea what raiding is like in other MMOs so you make stuff up in your head?

Also, "hard coded scripted"? You sound like one of those clueless marketers that just yells randomly buzzword you looked up online.

If the shepherds detected too many people in the area, or too many ponies were killed, the dragon would take to the sky, and ambush the raid force before it got anywhere near the lair.

Wow! So dynamic and advanced! Oh wait, it used a volume that tracks how many people are in the volume and triggered an event.

If there was too much healing or too many people outside the dragon lair rezzing people, the dragon would call in granite giants, some of which would throw people across the zone. The dragon had a lot of triggers that would bring out specific behavior, which is why a group of 100-200 would often fail, while an organized, dynamic, and reactive group of 40 people could bring it down.

100-200 people would often fail because herding a massive group of shitty players was a nightmare as well. You didn't need to be "dynamic" and "reactive" to kill raid bosses in DAOC. Most of the top guilds just approached bosses the same way, and they were just the same fight over and over again.

That, is the MOST BASIC raid boss in the game, unless you count some of the Lynn Barfog junk as raid bosses.

And it would be the most basic raid boss in almost every MMO to date (except maybe EQ1's 1 mechanic fights).

"Dynamic AI" is something that doesn't exist in DAOC. It is very basic AI. More advanced than EQ1? Very much so, yes. More advanced than FF11 as well.

/r/MMORPG Thread Parent