Page 1 of 3
1
2
3
LastLast
  1. #1

    Why is Thok not an optional boss?

    I remember the devs originally saying that SoO would not be a completely linear path of bosses, but obviously it's that way. Why is Thok a mandatory boss?

    He's all the way on the far east section of the last area of SoO, he holds no key and blocks no machinery to open the other doors. He's there as a prize of Garrosh, 'This is a big mean animal, you must kill it before he lets it loose on you.' As it stands, it poses no real danger to the raid and could be considered a 'mop up' operation.

    Spoils I can understand, you deny the enemy access to weaponry that he might use against you. A huge dinosaur that breaks out of his cage is not a weapon. He serves no purpose in preventing you from continuing except by being completely out of the way in a location no one would notice, and everybody would ignore.

    Just sayin'.

  2. #2
    Logic in video games are you serious.

  3. #3
    Immortal Raugnaut's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Frogspoison#1419 Battletag
    Posts
    7,134
    Heh. theres basically one choice- spoils or siegecrafter. If you want a "reason" for killing him, it could easily be "After Thok noms on all the guards, he would smell your raid and come chasing after you". Those doors/halls are pretty big, and I'm fairly certain Thok could fit through em.

    As for optional, well, we haven't had "optional" since Ulduar, pretty much. I do hope that next tiers will be more like Ulduar in terms of progression design.
    Quote Originally Posted by Moounter View Post
    I think your problem is a lack of intellect.

  4. #4
    Can do Siegecrafter before spoils/thok, and can do spoils->siege->thok if you want.
    The fact that they managed to make the bosses actually scale in difficulty pretty linearly means that it'd be stupid to do so, but there's "some" choise.
    That said, even the instances with "optional" bosses were, 9 of 10 times, cleared in the same order. For ICC, for example, it was almost always:
    Rotface = Festergut > Blood Princes > Valithria > Blood Queen > Putricide > Sindragosa.
    For BWD, it was: Atramedes (after all the nerfs) > Chim > Malkorok > Magmaw > Omnotron.
    For the tier overall:
    Halfus > Atramedes > Chim > Malkorok > Magmaw > Omnotron > Conclave > V+T > Nefarian > Cho'gall > Sinestra > Council > Al'Akir.
    You'll notice that, even despite the "choises", some of the non-skip able bosses were skipped because they were simply far harder till later on. For example, no guild in their right mind would work on ODS heroic if they'd yet to kill Atramedes or Chim, but you HAD to kill it to open the gate to the inner sanctum. Cho'gall was the only thing you had to do on HC in BoT to access sinestra who gave much better loot (infinite mana trinket) than anything, so people skipped AC as it was pure aids.

    So, eh. Options are there.

  5. #5
    Immortal roahn the warlock's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    In your base, killing your dudes
    Posts
    7,555
    Wanna know why? the same reason there aren't optionals in heroics anymore "Hey can we do this boss, I need loot from him" "No, we want to get this done as fast as possible"
    It was never Hardcore Vs Casual. It was Socialites Vs. Solo players
    Quote Originally Posted by ringpriest View Post
    World of Warcraft started life as a Computer Roleplaying Game, where part of the fun of the game experience was pretending to be your character. Stuff like applying poisons and eating food enhanced the verisimilitude of the experience of playing a fantasy character in another world. Now that game has changed to become a tactical arcade lobby game.

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Meh, I don't see any boss as "optional". I just see them as "go with this one first, it's harder".

    SoO progression is very linear, once you've downed Nazgrim at least, and there wouldn't exist any "optional" boss even if we could choose exact order between the last 6 bosses.

    I think that's the biggest reason to no optional bosses. Blizzard would rather focus on making the progression linear so the dungeon design makes more sense. Which Thok/Spoils/Siegecrafter absolutely does not. (See, even an optional path makes the logic of the design flawed)

    Quote Originally Posted by Raugnaut View Post
    Heh. theres basically one choice- spoils or siegecrafter. If you want a "reason" for killing him, it could easily be "After Thok noms on all the guards, he would smell your raid and come chasing after you". Those doors/halls are pretty big, and I'm fairly certain Thok could fit through em.
    Oooh, that gave me a great idea. Instead of an optional boss, they could introduce different ways of killing a boss. If you killed Siegecrafter before Thok/Spoils, Thok would rush out to the hall where you choose path and you'd fight him out there in a slightly different way. Spoils defense system would activate and you'd have a "wave" fight instead fighting wave after wave of enemies.

    *puts that into a suggestion box to Blizzard*
    Last edited by mmoce8f8bee469; 2013-12-07 at 06:16 AM.

  7. #7
    Immortal roahn the warlock's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    In your base, killing your dudes
    Posts
    7,555
    Quote Originally Posted by Megamisama View Post
    Oooh, that gave me a great idea. Instead of an optional boss, they could introduce different ways of killing a boss. If you killed Siegecrafter before Thok/Spoils, Thok would rush out to the hall where you choose path and you'd fight him out there in a slightly different way. Spoils defense system would activate and you'd have a "wave" fight instead fighting wave after wave of enemies.

    *puts that into a suggestion box to Blizzard*
    unfortunately, people would just do the simplest one
    It was never Hardcore Vs Casual. It was Socialites Vs. Solo players
    Quote Originally Posted by ringpriest View Post
    World of Warcraft started life as a Computer Roleplaying Game, where part of the fun of the game experience was pretending to be your character. Stuff like applying poisons and eating food enhanced the verisimilitude of the experience of playing a fantasy character in another world. Now that game has changed to become a tactical arcade lobby game.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by roahn the warlock View Post
    unfortunately, people would just do the simplest one
    Well yeah, of course. But I still think it would be very interesting for farm modes when you want to spice things up a bit.

  9. #9
    Void Lord Aeluron Lightsong's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    In some Sanctuaryesque place or a Haven
    Posts
    44,683
    Make it like an Achievement.
    #TeamLegion #UnderEarthofAzerothexpansion plz #Arathor4Alliance #TeamNoBlueHorde

    Warrior-Magi

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Aeluron Lightsong View Post
    Make it like an Achievement.
    As someone already said, the problem with optional bosses is people will take the option of not doing them. Attach an achievement to it, and they'll kill it for the achievement and then make excuses to avoid doing it again. Options in raids are divisive.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    It doesn't matter how linear it is, you will always go to the easier bosses first. How many people when straight for Heroic Alyrazor progression in Firelands skipping Shannox etc?

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Shannox was just as easy as alysrazor on hc tho?

    And all bosses in a raid should be mandatory to get to the last one. You should be able to choose the order to do them, but that's not the case.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Nebmyers View Post

    And all bosses in a raid should be mandatory to get to the last one. You should be able to choose the order to do them, but that's not the case.
    Why? Even if the game theoretically allowed the choice of order (as it does on heroic), you still wouldn't have a choice as an individual; so what's the point?

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Megamisama View Post
    Well yeah, of course. But I still think it would be very interesting for farm modes when you want to spice things up a bit.
    It would be very cool, but even with reused sound/graphical assets from existing bosses it'd still be taking the time to design an additional encounter most people would rather choose to ignore. So I don't think it's something they're likely to use often, possibly only for the one-per-expansion "harder than hard" heroic boss, if their M.O. is anything to go on. But again, it would be neat!

  15. #15
    Titan MerinPally's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Chemistry block.
    Posts
    13,372
    Quote Originally Posted by Nebmyers View Post
    Shannox was just as easy as alysrazor on hc tho?

    And all bosses in a raid should be mandatory to get to the last one. You should be able to choose the order to do them, but that's not the case.
    I agree with the second line but not necessarily the first line. We got Shannox heroic really quite easily but Alysrazor was a nightmare, we got 5/7hc then got Alys as our 6th. Baleroc was our 3rd heroic after Shannox and Majorhomo Faghelm and we didn't hit the enrage, and he was usually the 6th one you killed because it was so horrible. Same goes for the BWD list someone posted earlier - we got Omnom and Magmaw very quickly but then we did Maloriak. We heard that Chim was hard and Atra easy so we wiped on Atramedes for ages before going and killing Chimaeron in 7 attempts.

    Some raids work in mysterious ways!
    http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nicus/advanced
    Quote Originally Posted by goblinpaladin View Post
    Also a vegetable is a person.
    Quote Originally Posted by Orlong View Post
    I dont care if they [gays] are allowed to donate [blood], but I think we should have an option to refuse gay blood if we need to receive blood.

  16. #16
    Linear does not mean you can skip bosses, it means you can choose your route (when to do certain bosses), and it avoids the on rails experience. Ulduar had optional bosses and at some point (The Watchers) a non linear point.
    Quote Originally Posted by lakers01 View Post
    Those damn liberal colleges! Can you believe they brainwash people into thinking murder is wrong! And don't get me started with all that critical thinking bullshit!
    Quote Originally Posted by Rukentuts View Post
    I'm being trickled on from above. Wait that's not money.

  17. #17
    Titan MerinPally's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Chemistry block.
    Posts
    13,372
    Quote Originally Posted by Anevers View Post
    Linear does not mean you can skip bosses, it means you can choose your route (when to do certain bosses), and it avoids the on rails experience. Ulduar had optional bosses and at some point (The Watchers) a non linear point.
    I have hopes for WoD to do this right actually. When they showed us a map at Blizzcon of the Blackrock Foundry I almost wet myself. 3 wings of 3 bosses, each wing was non linear but you had to kill all bosses to get to the final boss, then they suggest that if you kill the final boss X many times you'll get like a key or a free pass to skip straight to him - for farming purposes.
    http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nicus/advanced
    Quote Originally Posted by goblinpaladin View Post
    Also a vegetable is a person.
    Quote Originally Posted by Orlong View Post
    I dont care if they [gays] are allowed to donate [blood], but I think we should have an option to refuse gay blood if we need to receive blood.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by MerinPally View Post
    I agree with the second line but not necessarily the first line. We got Shannox heroic really quite easily but Alysrazor was a nightmare, we got 5/7hc then got Alys as our 6th. Baleroc was our 3rd heroic after Shannox and Majorhomo Faghelm and we didn't hit the enrage, and he was usually the 6th one you killed because it was so horrible. Same goes for the BWD list someone posted earlier - we got Omnom and Magmaw very quickly but then we did Maloriak. We heard that Chim was hard and Atra easy so we wiped on Atramedes for ages before going and killing Chimaeron in 7 attempts.

    Some raids work in mysterious ways!
    How weird, we found everything upto baleroc easy to kill on hc progress, majordomo was easy too raggy was a pain but killed him eventually.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    I feel like you're taking things a bit out of context, OP. They did indeed say that SoO wouldn't be completely linar, which is very much true. You can do Siegecrafter > Spoils > Thok, you could even go Spoils > Siegecrafter > Thok. Even if that would make little sense in most cases. I get what you mean, though. The raid feels pretty linear to me aswell, but I would assume that the zones were already done for the most part, so it would be a waste of resources to change the layout of SoO to make it less linear as it would've only delayed the patch and would not have added that much to the game.

    You also forgot to mention that it was said that with designing future raids, they would keep in mind that players do not like raids to be too linear. I believe the layout they showed for Blackrock Foundry (I think that was the name) was pretty open.

    Finally I do have to say that you make a pretty good point in saying that Thok does not pose a threat. Considering he's in chains and being subdued until we pretty much free him and all..

  20. #20
    Elemental Lord Spl4sh3r's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    8,518
    Quote Originally Posted by Dracodraco View Post
    Can do Siegecrafter before spoils/thok, and can do spoils->siege->thok if you want.
    The fact that they managed to make the bosses actually scale in difficulty pretty linearly means that it'd be stupid to do so, but there's "some" choise.
    That said, even the instances with "optional" bosses were, 9 of 10 times, cleared in the same order. For ICC, for example, it was almost always:
    Rotface = Festergut > Blood Princes > Valithria > Blood Queen > Putricide > Sindragosa.
    For BWD, it was: Atramedes (after all the nerfs) > Chim > Malkorok > Magmaw > Omnotron.
    For the tier overall:
    Halfus > Atramedes > Chim > Malkorok > Magmaw > Omnotron > Conclave > V+T > Nefarian > Cho'gall > Sinestra > Council > Al'Akir.
    You'll notice that, even despite the "choises", some of the non-skip able bosses were skipped because they were simply far harder till later on. For example, no guild in their right mind would work on ODS heroic if they'd yet to kill Atramedes or Chim, but you HAD to kill it to open the gate to the inner sanctum. Cho'gall was the only thing you had to do on HC in BoT to access sinestra who gave much better loot (infinite mana trinket) than anything, so people skipped AC as it was pure aids.

    So, eh. Options are there.
    That is incorrect, usually in ICC you did Rotface/Festergut then Putricide. Maybe on world first race you do the easier in each quarter first. But when not doing world first race you do them by proximity so you clear each quarter before moving to the next and usually the closest quarter first aswell

    As for SoO, it is pretty linear still though there was some choice no matter if it was only between 2 bosses, or 3 if you are technical. At least with Warlords of Draenor you have whole wings to choose from again. And you will be able to do the last wing directly after you done the other ones at least one time. Think they said something about key pieces dropping from the normal wings that you can put together to access last one directly the next reset. Though I don't know if its guaranteed to drop on first time or just a chance.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •