The fantasy MMORPG Guild Wars 2 will change some game mechanics for the planned expansion “Heart of Thorns” to allow more freedom in designing boss encounters.
“Defiance” is the resilience that bosses exhibit against crowd control abilities in GW2. ArenaNet intends to redesign this system for the expansion “Heart of Thorns” so that a second bar will be displayed under the boss’s health bar, symbolizing their “Defiance” and filling up gradually (so to speak, a Defiance-o-meter). Several players must coordinate and simultaneously use control abilities to empty this bar. This way, they will deplete the bar. Additional abilities will then have the desired CC effect.
This system allows GW2 developers greater freedom in designing boss encounters. A blog post describes the fight against a flying Wyvern, where CC abilities must be coordinated to prevent the fluttering beast from taking off and quickly bringing it back down to earth.
Fire Demon Wyvern Requires Design Tricks
Overall, the Wyvern seems to be a true fire demon and an interesting champion encounter. In the second part of the blog entry, the developers describe the processes needed to prevent both the server and the players’ PCs from overheating amidst all the fire-spitting. The Wyvern is designed so that players can recognize from its model when it is about to spit fire: A spectacular glow should move over its belly, into its chest, and finally into its throat – a sure sign that a fiery hell is about to rain down on the players. A napalm-like effect is promised.
My MMO says: Defiance sounds quite similar to the system in WildStar. There, too, good coordination of CC abilities is needed in boss encounters to break through the opponents’ defenses and then actually stun them or interrupt an attack. Since GW2 currently has weaknesses with bosses (the combat often feels spammy and zerg-like due to the lack of a Holy Trinity), every step that enables more boss mechanics is initially positive. Or how do you see it?
