MMO Design: Vet Party Building

[Part of my MMO Design folder.]

While playing Vindictus I decided to join a party raid titled "Pls Join" for a boss I've never done. While waiting for the party to fill up I asked what tactics were needed and only got replies of "This is my first run too!" and "Lolz I dunno! xD". Still, the team filled up and we set off. As per usual for all raids I've participated in (other than Lakoria) the first move was setting up a campfire to buff up. During this down time I asked again and got different people telling me they also didn't know what to do. That's cool, we can learn together I thought.

Battle begins, we're not doing too badly until the boss nukes us with a special skill. The party leader then gets pissed and says "You do know how to fight this right?". Um. What? 6 out of 8 of your team just said they didn't. Weren't you listening? He then says "Sorry all, I'm restarting" and ends the raid right there. A few minutes later I see his new party waiting for members entitled "Please know what to do".

Without getting into the "play the way you want to play" argument, wouldn't the easiest method to fix this simply be a check box for "Veteran" when viewing the party list? One you have to "tick" first before joining the party, and the only people who can click the tick box are those who on their last attempt of that same raid/mission were successful (otherwise the option is greyed out so you can't just bluff the box)? This way people who failed it or haven't tried it can't join "Know what to do parties" and at the same time Vets who get tired of waiting for the "vet party" to fill up can opt to knowingly join a potentially less experienced team.

Do you think this will cause more problems that it will solve or is it something you would like to see?

Vindictus: Executioner Pantheum

[This is part of my Vindictus tutorials.]

There are a number of Raid missions in the Twilight Desert and Executioner Pantheum is probably the easiest one there for a Kai. As a raid though, the rule of thumb is go with a full party just to make things go faster. Pantheum has his own large arena which features four corner pillars around an open center stage that actually does him no favors. For starters, all his regular moves match that of any reaper you've previously fought so you should know how to evade if he gets up to you.

Use the pillars as cover during the fight if possible as they block Pantheum's movement and attacks. When Pantheum goes into "lightning" mode, he becomes invulnerable unless he walks within a set radius of an active pillar. Make sure you are using the same pillar the rest of the team is while you do this as the pillar activation times are much shorter than his lightning mode (and each pillar has a long recharge time) meaning you'll need to displace a few times if all is going well.

Just pretend you are in an FPS. Use cover!

When he goes into "Fire" mode the central stage lights up with damaging flame. Continue combat as before, using pillars as cover from his fireballs but keep an eye on the stage. As soon as the central flames go out, get in there because everything outside will pretty much die in a big explosion. Rinse and repeat until you win. :)

Vindictus: Sewer Sniping

[This is part of my Vindictus tutorials.]

More tips today but these are more for a Kai/ranged type.

The sewers are both an excellent and a horrible place for a Kai. Apart from being tight quarters and home to some agile lizardmen assassins (who are perhaps the only trash melee mob that manage to get up and damage me in a combo), it features very few types of boss chambers. The first is little more than a slightly larger than average square room. This type sucks, and you will have to fight fairly against the usually spry (ratman kung fu dude) or cheating boss within (I'm looking at you Shadow Shaman Ingkara - who summons shadows of other bosses to help him)!

Fortunately the other type of boss room is much more favourable, and is connected by a few passages to a portion that looks like this:

The bosses in those chambers can be lured back here, and then by simply standing on a different level you can snipe them at your leisure. Only the lizard assassin boss I think has means to chase you up and down, but even then it isn't consistent, giving you ample time to displace and snipe him from
elsewhere.

There's also one boss, Warrior Chuilin, who has a cliff. You have to be a bit speedy to make sure he is downstairs while you are up, but if you stand at this spot his AI breaks and again you can snipe the otherwise dangerous boss to death.

Owned.

Lastly, the raid boss Thor - a giant electric frog, is pretty easy for a Kai player in a group. Stay away from the frog. Stay out of the water. Fire at will. Easy peasy.

Vindictus

For the past month I've been playing the free to play action MMO "Vindictus" a fair bit and obviously find it quite cool. That said it I also see that it has its fair share of problems. The town hubs really serve as the main MMO aspect of the game, where players can interact and pick up quests. All the action itself is packed away into segmented instances hosted by the party leader, so two parties adventuring in the same place will never meet by chance for example.

You will also be stuck with whatever class restrictions you chose at the start. For instance, I made a Kai (bow wielder), and while I can customize his appearance to be slightly more unique, I am restricted to bows as my primary weapon and can never use weapons or armor of the other classes. As expected, the story is quite linear too and the side quests while being optional and grindy, are really optimal places to get EXP and gold from. While most battles are repeatable, none of the quests are. Much like the action, the story starts pretty slow but ramps up very nicely as you go through the game.

The combat itself is one of the big highlights for me, specifically the numerous boss fights. Really, none of the regular mobs have caused me any problems but the bosses require some good timing, concentration and on the later ones (season 2) some light planning. These are made more awesome by the fantastic sound track in the game. I like that they opted to not play any background music while actually running a mission and only to turn on the awesomeness once you reach a boss.

You can find the music under Vindictus/en-US/sound/bgm/

I do take issue that they put mandatory raids as part of the main story which is a bit of a downer since I absolutely hate the whole notion of raids to begin with. These also serve as pseudo walls to my enjoyment as it is very dependent on other people taking part. Given that the story is the my main reason for playing it, having stupid blocks like this only serve to drive players like me away. There's also a very tangible "pay to win" factor in the game in that people with NX cash can pay to be revived (or to revive the entire party) within mission.

I think Mabinogi (to which it is related) also beats it in one aspect: the "Life" part. The question of "after you finish the story, what is there to do" leaves a bit of a blank for me in Vindictus. It's the reverse in Mabinogi, where there seems to always be too much to do! Anyway, Vindictus is my "flavor" at the moment so you can expect more posts related to it coming up!