Ooh - real-world example! (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Sunday, June 30, 2019, 16:05 (1983 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Yesterday, I ran through Shattered Throne with someone who was looking to grab corrupted eggs. He'd been through once, mostly knew what he was doing - just wanted the eggs. Partway through we were joined by someone who had never been in the ST before.

Both of them were happy to have me give them a brief summary of the goals, and the pitfalls, of each section as we got to it.

We got to the final bossfight, I started to lay out rules, and one of them jumped in and started it. Whatever - we just went with it. Killed the psions, knocked down the health of the knights, grabbed the orbs, went to town. Someone screwed up and let an orb expire before picking it up, but hey, we can do this with 2/3 buff, right?

One of 'em says "how come she's immune?"

After a couple of questions, I realized he'd stepped on the buff-clearing table. (I learned, for the first time, that once it's activated, it won't clear buffs again until the next round. Whee! That meant that if we didn't finish her, the other two of us were gonna die when the timer hit 0.

We died.

"How come you didn't warn me?" was the response. (Same guy who cleared the table was the guy who started early and cut off explanations, fwiw.)

Learning about mechanics by failing is NOT everyone's cup of tea. I'm glad it's yours... but I'm also glad there are ways of completing things without HAVING to be blind.

A good solution is this:

Difficulty levels, with the complexity of the mechanics rising with the difficulty level.

Maybe have a very easy mode with virtually no mechanics, and a hard mode with lots to keep track of. One of the biggest disappointments I've had with Hard Mode raids is that the mechanics are virtually the same. They could have instead thrown a wrench into each encounter with more plates to juggle.

Or... you could just let people enjoy playing the way they want to?