Too Few Raid Mechanics, New Ones Needed

[Herecius]

So, inspired by this thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...6#post36502626 I got to wondering...

What would a brand new mechanic in WoW look like?

Does anybody have any good ideas for a brand new mechanic, something that actually forces a player in a raid change how they play? And no, vehicles are a cop-out for this discussion, as you can't just say 'give all the players totally different abilities to make them play differently' I think (not that vehicles don't have their place in raids still!).

So I want to use this thread to cultivate players' ideas on brand new mechanics, or at the very least, variations of current mechanics that we have legitimately never encountered before.

WoW has had 18 tiers of raids. Hundreds of raid bosses. And yet, the mechanics have not changed all that much over the years, and how many are there, even?

Get the debuff and move out of the group. Sometimes the debuff requires you to only move a certain amount out of the group, or inversely requires everybody to move away from you.
'Thing' (boss ability, debuff on player, something in the arena) produces green/purple/red/TRAIN bullshit. Get out of the bullshit (choo choo motherfucker).
The boss/add cleaves, either just as a cleave, or because he does a flashy cone aoe explosion/breath of some kind. Don't stand on the tank.
'Thing' (boss ability, debuff on player, etc) hits for a very high, shared damage amount. Stack the appropriate number of people to share damage.
Excessive raid damage happens over a short period of time demanding increased healer output during that time.
Interrupt X Ability on boss/add or something Bad happens.
Add/boss fixates on player, player must run with add/boss. In some cases, functionally, but not visually identical to getting a debuff and running out of the group.
AoE interrupt shout forcing casters to stop casting.
Knockback that makes you reposition.
In Cataclysm, we got the extra action button that allows us to have 'debuff that requires us to press extra action button at the right time, occasionally while targeting the correct thing.'
Debuff on player that goes up and up, and must be dealt with (dispelled, killing an add/boss, not standing in bullshit, healed), or it eventually kills/mind controls/makes that player go thermonuclear.

In order to make new bosses, raid designers have to constantly try and vary, combine, and tweak this fairly small set of mechanics in order to keep raids fresh.

What are your ideas to add to this list of brand new mechanics? Even if it's something so unique it could only be used for one boss at most! I'll add my own idea later, I want to see what other folks have first.

[Fawkess]

Pvp encounters in Raiding
Look at ToTC

Not my cup of tea but some would like this

We have gotten some new mechanics like the ones on Tyrant or Gorefiend

[Nzete]

Pvp encounters in Raiding
Look at ToTC

Not my cup of tea but some would like this

Thank you, no, I didn't like having to carry armour potions as a priest healer to mess with the alternate AI which went after the people with the least armour.

[slime]

I would say something with adds, and adds management. That would be new and refreshing for wow.

[Herecius]

We have gotten some new mechanics like the ones on Tyrant or Gorefiend

What was new on Tyrant? Gorefiend I'll give you, the idea of a boss keeping you from dying is pretty good. Tyrant though... we've had our movement limited before by debuffs, and our HP forcefully reduced before (even does it on Council in the same instance), also by debuffs. Those'd both fall under the 'let the debuff stack too high and you die somehow' one.

[Herecius]

Suppose I'll add my own idea now.... I was thinking something along the lines of the lighting engine in WoW. WoW doesn't have a physics engine obviously, but it could use lighting as a mechanic. Suppose a boss arena was completely dark, and you had to use an object, or a debuff in order to light up the room, and this light would be important for both killing things (can't target things not in the light) and surviving abilities (abilities in the light behave differently than if the boss/adds cast them outside of the light).

Durumu kinda had this I suppose, but I'm more thinking in a function that actually uses the game's lighting and is far more controllable by the players.

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How about range tanking bosses or mind controlling adds
Maybe more terrain interaction (not necessarily platforming, perhaps destructible terrain?)

I definitely miss range tanking. Tanking Blood Princes on my hunter was a lot of fun. Terrain interaction is also good, we don't have enough of it. Most boss arenas are totally static, which is a problem I think.

[Fawkess]

Suppose I'll add my own idea now.... I was thinking something along the lines of the lighting engine in WoW. WoW doesn't have a physics engine obviously, but it could use lighting as a mechanic. Suppose a boss arena was completely dark, and you had to use an object, or a debuff in order to light up the room, and this light would be important for both killing things (can't target things not in the light) and surviving abilities (abilities in the light behave differently than if the boss/adds cast them outside of the light).

Durumu kinda had this I suppose, but I'm more thinking in a function that actually uses the game's lighting and is far more controllable by the players.

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I definitely miss range tanking. Tanking Blood Princes on my hunter was a lot of fun. Terrain interaction is also good, we don't have enough of it. Most boss arenas are totally static, which is a problem I think.

Its like the dark summoner from the brawlers guild, you have to flash mobs with a flashlight to do damage to them
Would be pretty cool as a boss

An idea i had was maybe a butcher type fight from diablo with the Floor shooting up fire

[cordrann]

I feel like you are selling blizzard short. How would you fit visions of death in your list? What about painting the floor on stone guards? Or a whole host of mechanics on lei'shen? On top of that, lets look at two in the same category. The heigan dance and say consecrate on the illidari council would both qualify as get out of the bullshit mechanics for your list, but functionally they operate in totally different manners and demand different things from the players. Its not just what the mechanic is, but how they throw it at you that counts.

[Herecius]

I feel like you are selling blizzard short. How would you fit visions of death in your list? What about painting the floor on stone guards? Or a whole host of mechanics on lei'shen? On top of that, lets look at two in the same category. The heigan dance and say consecrate on the illidari council would both qualify as get out of the bullshit mechanics for your list, but functionally they operate in totally different manners and demand different things from the players. Its not just what the mechanic is, but how they throw it at you that counts.

Visions of Death is a positional debuff mechanic - three players must move out of the raid to a certain spot, or you wipe. Painting the floor is little more than a debuff you can control.

Lei Shen in particular had nothing truly new in terms of mechanics. Adds that aoe, a split damage aoe, knockback/pushbacks, fire/cone aoes you can't stand in... but he was still a brilliant fight, yes. The combinations and timing of all of those things happening was truly challenging to deal with. My favorite in MoP by far. But still, nothing truly new!

These are variations on the same mechanics, yes, and trust me when I say I am not selling Blizzard short. The raid designers really go the extra mile in creating variations and combinations of a small set of mechanics in order to really keep raids fresh, but what I'm talking about is introducing things that are totally new to the game.

[Herecius]

I remember back in 4E D&D (which beyond all the hate it got was mechanically very innovative) there was a huge focus on set-piece battles. The developers said that for big encounters you needed the environment to be part of the encounter itself. The problem in part is that WoW terrain is horrible for even the most basic platforming.

Making the environment part of the encounter really is something I want Blizzard to do more of. I do get that the game engine and gameplay would be very, very taxed to make it work, though... but I still would like Blizzard to explore the possibilities.

[Fang7986]

Suppose I'll add my own idea now.... I was thinking something along the lines of the lighting engine in WoW. WoW doesn't have a physics engine obviously, but it could use lighting as a mechanic. Suppose a boss arena was completely dark, and you had to use an object, or a debuff in order to light up the room, and this light would be important for both killing things (can't target things not in the light) and surviving abilities (abilities in the light behave differently than if the boss/adds cast them outside of the light).

Durumu kinda had this I suppose, but I'm more thinking in a function that actually uses the game's lighting and is far more controllable by the players.

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I definitely miss range tanking. Tanking Blood Princes on my hunter was a lot of fun. Terrain interaction is also good, we don't have enough of it. Most boss arenas are totally static, which is a problem I think.

the lighting thing is the same as a stay out of the fire, stay in this area mechanic or a block the beam mechanic not sure how that's suppose to be different than anything else you listed.

[Herecius]

the lighting thing is the same as a stay out of the fire, stay in this area mechanic or a block the beam mechanic not sure how that's suppose to be different than anything else you listed.

True... it's still only really a thing that's forcing the raid to go to a specific place. Perhaps I'm more just married to the idea of using the game's lighting engine somehow as a mechanic, since that definitely hasn't been done before.

[Notdev]

"thing to move out of" is pretty vague and too encompassing. I don't think we had an ability like, say, wrought chaos before. Though I could be wrong.

Mannoroth's fear soaking is neat, especially with the final phase leaving needed pools behind.
Xhul horac's needing one debuff to clear the other? Don't think that's been done before.
Kormrok's "how well you spread out at certain points dictates how much room you have for the fight" is pretty unique. As well as empowered runes.
Gorefiend's whole digest mechanic

But yes, raiding can be summarized with "stand here, don't stand in that, dodge that, dps that, interrupt that, don't cast during that, dispel that".

[Tirilka]

Well at some point it all comes down to "do dps" and "move", but there is no need to oversimplify examples to equal them to past mechanics. Heigan dance and arcane mines on Imperator MarGok are still different mechanics, even if they both require you to move away.
You forgot the 'constantly moving' mechanic, like Blackfuse, Iskar, Lei Shen, and of course the notorious Hansgar and Franzok with their conveyor belt. I love it a lot, and that's because it uses enviroment, thus I agree with people here, I'd like for more terrain engagement. It would be so cool, if the vines from that bleeding hollow orc cave in Zorammarsh (Tanaan) were a part of a raid encounter. Where you have to traverse it quickly, and not fall. And jump from one to another. It's a completely new activity, absolutely different from the usual raid mechanics, and requires a different kind of mastery. Nevermind people whining about wow "horrible" engine, because they suck at jumping puzzles.

Another idea is using screen manipulations. Like the sha monster in a cave under Nuizao Temple, where he puts a debuff on you which makes a horrifying scream and makes you screen pitch black (except interface). That can be made into a raid mechanic too. Like, having to remember something before the screen goes dark, and then doing some stuff while completely blind.

[Herecius]

Well at some point it all comes down to "do dps" and "move", but there is no need to oversimplify examples to equal them to past mechanics. Heigan dance and arcane mines on Imperator MarGok are still different mechanics, even if they both require you to move away.
You forgot the 'constantly moving' mechanic, like Blackfuse, Iskar, Lei Shen, and of course the notorious Hansgar and Franzok with their conveyor belt. I love it a lot, and that's because it uses enviroment, thus I agree with people here, I'd like for more terrain engagement. It would be so cool, if the vines from that bleeding hollow orc cave in Zorammarsh (Tanaan) were a part of a raid encounter. Where you have to traverse it quickly, and not fall. And jump from one to another. It's a completely new activity, absolutely different from the usual raid mechanics, and requires a different kind of mastery. Nevermind people whining about wow "horrible" engine, because they suck at jumping puzzles.

Another idea is using screen manipulations. Like the sha monster in a cave under Nuizao Temple, where he puts a debuff on you which makes a horrifying scream and makes you screen pitch black (except interface). That can be made into a raid mechanic too. Like, having to remember something before the screen goes dark, and then doing some stuff while completely blind.

I love the shit out of jumping puzzles, I won't lie there. But the difficulty with them is that they gave a pretty hilariously blatant advantage to the brand new class with their fancy double jump, I think...

[Aphrel]

Wildstar had an intresting mechanic. Abilities that needed X amounts of interupts to be interupted. adding another layer of difficulty when assigning more than 1 interupter per cast.

[cordrann]

Visions of Death is a positional debuff mechanic - three players must move out of the raid to a certain spot, or you wipe. Painting the floor is little more than a debuff you can control.

Lei Shen in particular had nothing truly new in terms of mechanics. Adds that aoe, a split damage aoe, knockback/pushbacks, fire/cone aoes you can't stand in... but he was still a brilliant fight, yes. The combinations and timing of all of those things happening was truly challenging to deal with. My favorite in MoP by far. But still, nothing truly new!

These are variations on the same mechanics, yes, and trust me when I say I am not selling Blizzard short. The raid designers really go the extra mile in creating variations and combinations of a small set of mechanics in order to really keep raids fresh, but what I'm talking about is introducing things that are totally new to the game.

This just seems like a vast over simplification. Why not just go all the way and say wow only has one mechanic? Ones that force players to push buttons.

[Rawrzillasor]

Herecius you are just climp of that is just a movement debuff or that is just a health loss mechanic together. Just grasping for broad statements about abilities when most of them have been new or used in one fight but but never implemented in a way that is it on a new fight

[apoe]

What was new on Tyrant? Gorefiend I'll give you, the idea of a boss keeping you from dying is pretty good. Tyrant though... we've had our movement limited before by debuffs, and our HP forcefully reduced before (even does it on Council in the same instance), also by debuffs. Those'd both fall under the 'let the debuff stack too high and you die somehow' one.

Tyrant was interesting, though I think the boss had too many mechanics:

P1 - take damage when moving. But there is also infernal tempest (AKA "fuck melee") which forces everyone to move and also does splash damage. This synergizes with the movement-punishing aura. Imagine an entire boss fight designed around this aura but with multiple boss mechanics that force the raid to move in a very specific pattern or something (while forcing each player to move the minimum distance necessary), but if you move too much you die, that would be unique.

Wildstar had an intresting mechanic. Abilities that needed X amounts of interupts to be interupted. adding another layer of difficulty when assigning more than 1 interupter per cast.

That would just be annoying / boring. I'd rather have a boss do really fast casts non-stop that require many people on a rotation than needing X interrupts per cast.

[Herecius]

Tyrant was interesting, though I think the boss had too many mechanics:

P1 - take damage when moving. But there is also infernal tempest (AKA "fuck melee") which forces everyone to move and also does splash damage. This synergizes with the movement-punishing aura. Imagine an entire boss fight designed around this aura but with multiple boss mechanics that force the raid to move in a very specific pattern or something, that would be unique.

Forcing the raid to actually create patterns would be cool. One person got to do that sorta back on Twin Consorts in Throne of Thunder, and it was really cool how it was presented... but only one person got to do it, or even see how it happened.

For the folks who are accusing me of oversimplifying by the way, you're right: I'm doing that on purpose. We can distill the mechanics down to some pretty basic concepts. I want to hear folks' ideas at least for how we can use the mechanics we've already got to create a new experience in new fights, if not creating entirely new game systems. Want to use the forum to brainstorm new boss mechanics, basically.