Bosses in the campaign are pretty straight forward ‘Tank and Spank’ type of deals.
Since Reforged is going to be updating the campaigns pacing and flow, should bosses be given mechanics and phases to simulate an actual boss fight?
I think if we want to play the classic style of tank-and-spank and overwhelming the boss and stunlocking them, we have that in the original. I personally would like to see some actual boss mechanics make their way into the game, something that challenges the RTS action and makes us wary of positioning or when to properly dispel.
Something like a boss fight out of Impossible Bosses (a simplified version for campaign) is what I’d like to see in Reforged. Have a Necromancer sub-boss spawn dozens of skeletons from the ground, forcing you to dispel quickly. Have a Boss channel-cast a powerful spell, forcing you to time your stuns. Have a boss channel projectiles around the room in the last phase, forcing you to micro your positioning while burning down the boss.
I think a good template for this is the PVE Brawls in Heroes of the Storm, or some of the bossmechanics in SC2. While some of these fights are done with controlling only 1 hero in mind, I think they could be adapted to controlling an army, with more mechanics added with higher difficulty.
I would really like to see something like this. I’ve been playing the SC2 campaign again lately, and at every turn I just keep thinking “geez, please let the Reforged campaign be as cool as this”. I mean, the original WC3 campaign is a bit dated: most of the maps are just same old melee maps. Don’t get me wrong, the campaign is overall very great, but it still could be better - at least gameplay-wise.
For example, I love how fast the base building gets in SC2 with all the campaign-only upgrades. Like, it doesn’t matter that most of the maps are basically just melee maps, because the base building and training an army gets so fast that you get to the actual point of the map very quickly. In WC3 I just think with many of the maps like why can’t I just have an already-built base at the start of the map, because I am wasting so much time to just build up my army to get to the good part of the map.
Totally agree! The Magtheridon fight is actually pretty crazy even by these standards. I could add the following to the list of possible bosses:
Slave Owner; 2) KT; 3) MG and co.; 4) spooky living Nerubians; 5) the Frostmourne-guarding Revenant; 6) MG again; 7) Uther and co.; 8) Sylvanas and Anasterian; 9) Blackrock Orcs; 10) Antonidas.
And in TFT, there’s a cute Pit Lord in the Tomb of Sargeras. He must return. He’s literally one of the two (three with Rexxar’s campaign?) Pit Lords a player can fight, and the only one unnamed (there’s another one in a cutscene).
A good chunk of them already have something like that. Mag has cleave and insane base attack damage. To even confront him properly needs almost a full army, which you essentially have to preserve through the two side bosses and multiple Fel Orc bases just to do.
Unless you’re talking about “Normal” difficulty, most major bosses (The Forgotten One excluded) already can be fairly challenging, especially for newer players. I’d rather not have a mini WoW game going on while trying to do everything else for the Campaign. Leave super-micro-intensive gameplay for Customs or Ladder, lest we create another Legacy of the Void
Ditto. LotV has incredible story, visuals an army customization.
Magtheridon is the best boss encounter is the game. I would like others to be as challenging. At least, on the ultrahard difficulty (they did say there might be such).
Check out this glorious failure at Magtheridon by the Russian streamer bonivur.
Yeah, on a related note, Blizzard must add in more autosaves.
Interesting topic.Anything that makes the campaign more challenging should be welcomed but ofc not straying too much from the base mechanics of the game.Spiceing things up a bit is always nice.For example for me Lords of Everquest was a nice game that could realy throw things at you in the campaigns that makes you think always and can very often give you a serious pounding if you make a silly mistake.And its mechanics are very similar to war3.
This is the type of boss battle I’m thinking of. Not as quick and intense though, since the pacing is designed for MOBA players. I imagine the phases being more drawn out.
Magtheridon is a cool boss battle but I think it could be spiced up even more if he had phases, like the boss battle above. Here’s an example
Phase 1
Magtheridon has a large mana pool and high-cost spells. He will cast and channel spells so long as he has mana, and you should be Mana Burning/Mana Draining him to prevent it. Tank and Spank
Stasis
He enters ‘Stasis’, where he is immune to attacks and spells. This wipes any Debuffs on him and gives him time to regen his mana. He casts Rain of Fire around the map on your units. You must kill the Minions channeling his invincibility. This phase is activated at 33% HP and at 66% HP
Phase 2
After coming out of first Stasis, he resumes Phase 1 but with Howl of Terror ability to debuff you
He will summon minions onto the field. Kill the big one for a Unholy Frenzy buff.
This gives a bit of strategy to the phase. Make sure you position the minion where you can get the most benefit
You can burn the big minion and get Unholy Frenzy buff immediately, or you can CC (Banish) the minion and save it for later.
Phase 3
After coming out of 2nd Stasis, he will have Devour Magic to heal himself and gain mana. Keep Mana Burning him, Spread out your units.
There will be mini healing fountains scattered around the room, but you have to be careful of him casting Rain of Fire on top of your hurt units
Big Minions continue to spawn, you can choose to burn them for the buff or CC and ignore them
What is this, a MobA? Hell no. Warcraft 3 already has its own mechanics, and fighting playable heroes is the whole point. You know what the weakness of each hero is, and can exploit it. Having to learn something THAT complicated makes actual 0 sense in an RTS. If this was WoW, sure that could be a thing. But this is just excessive. How would you learn these mechanics to plan for them, beyond literally losing your army and having to start over?
Literally nothing is more annoying than invulnerability mechanics in Campaigns. Think about how fun it is to kill the Paladins during any of the Undead campaigns.
Bosses don’t need this complicated of a fight to be fun or rewarding to kill. Seeing a Pitlord AoE cleave down your army in his demonic fury is plenty to get the adrenaline going. And let’s not forget that the point of campaigns is for the story.
I disagree, otherwise you can just watch youtube for the story.
The point of a campaign is to be played. In terms of campaign bosses, there are no weaknesses to exploit, its a zergfest of whatever units you have left by the end of the mission. There isn’t much strategy beyond ‘press all the buttons that can be pressed until the boss is dead’.
Magtheridon is hard because his stats are inflated, thats about it. We can call that challenging, but it is not very engaging.
Story is not mutually exclusive to basic gameplay.
I vividly remember being unable to beat Starcraft Campaigns when I was younger, and had to resort to the only cheat code I knew (thereisnocowlevel) to get the story. If you want those “boss fight” mechanics, do what you’ve suggested to people disliking edits and “Go make your own Campaign levels.”
As a person whose replayed the WC3 campaigns more than any other story content in any other game in his life. I completely agree making certain enemy characters like Mag more dynamic to fight is a great idea.
Yes vanilla mag is hard but he’s mostly just a giant fat tub of lard who sits there and wails on you. You might as well be fighting a generic tauren with buffed HP and damage. It’s very underwhelming compared to recent blizzard games RTS or RPG bosses.
Again, not mutually exclusive. The canpaigns are being remade, there is precedent to have story and decent mechanics if they are already implementing new sub-bosses.
If you like tank and spank, its all in the original campaign, which remains untouched.
Mechanics can also be toned down with difficulty settings to the point of being negligible, like LFR mode. Difficulty and mechanics are not mutually exclusive either.
It would. Making a climactic boss fight more memorable and maybe telling the story with the mechanics better.
You’d be surprised how much care and attention goes into game mechanical storytelling.
Besides, it’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s just putting a tire around the old wooden cart wheel.
