BioWare Austin Talks MMO Gameplay

IGN brings us some coverage of an AGDC discussion panel on MMO gameplay hosted by BioWare Austin’s Damion Schubert.

Raid encounters are another major form of endgame content, and center around the idea of players working as a team to essentially solve a puzzle. Raid encounters center on boss fights. The draw, naturally, is the loot, but Schubert says there’s also the draw of solving the puzzle of the boss’ attack patterns. Bosses can have a number of different attack routines, from predictable patterns to randomized attacks to the summoning of minions. These types of actions work to engage players in a number of ways. It requires those in the raid to coordinate their positions and movement on the field of battle, manage their health, and also generates different sub-types of player classes outside of the standard tank, healer, and damage dealers.

Schubert cited the Vashj boss encounter in World of Warcraft as an example, who summons a creature with a fear aura that can create havoc with your raid group. During this battle you need someone to essentially distract the creature from the main battle group, essentially creating a new type of role with whoever’s assigned to do that. With balancing these kinds of encounters and determining what drops, it’s also important to consider, especially in large dungeons, the frequency with which players will run into each boss. For instance, the boss near the door is going to get killed far more frequently than whatever is to have someone run around with the strider to keep him away from the rest of the raid. Creating new responsibilities is a good mechanic to keep people interested beyond tank and healer roles.

Based on this article, I’m starting to worry that BioWare’s MMORPG will just end up being more of the same.