Land of Iron Boss Rework

[Black Rain]

Disclaimer: While I have basic coding knowledge, I have never coded a game or any of it's mechanics. I am however suggesting mechanics that either already exist in nin online (spider boss, snake boss) along with some others that have been implemented in similar games. It is up to the game developers whether these mechanics are efficient/plausible to implement.

While Land of iron (LOI) on release was very populated, the zone has been gradually declining to the point where, despite the high mission rewards and best in slot gear available from drops, it is rarely active. As someone who has done all the content this zone has to offer multiple times as well as killed both end game bosses (Nobu ~600 kills, Mitsuhide ~200 kills), I wanted to share my experience of the problem the zone has as well as some suggestions for improvement. 

 

The Problem with LOI:
Some of the content is actually good; some missions like fill the bucket and haiku 575 offer a good change to normal missions and reward with good XP. While the kill missions IMO are bit overkill (due to very tanky mobs with a high kill requirement to complete), it is fine if you are grinding them for the build up to farm the end game bosses that have the best drops in the game. 

The main problem lies here, with the END GAME bosses (General Nobu + Admiral Mitsuhide). There are several reasons for this, listed here:

• Boss design: These bosses offer little mechanics that provide a challenge to the player. They are basically just walking cannons that have so much HP (With full DPS builds, 2 full INT players would efficiently kill Nobu in ~25 minutes, Mitsuhide in ~50 minutes). They can be kited, however they both have unavoidable damage moves due to the room being so small
• Cheese strats: Because there is no limit to entering and leaving the boss rooms, and the fights offer no reward for playing correctly, no one kills this boss as intended. I highlight this because there is no incentive to do so, and instead of a challenging, end-game boss, you're left with people going outside the room, waiting for CD's, going in, bursting and walking out to repeat about 60-70 times before they finally get a kill. This is because even while playing perfectly, you can easily be RNG'd with unavoidable damage, leading to death and a reset of a VERY tanky boss, with all your progress lost. 
• No challenge: The bosses in all honestly, are not challenging. Yes, they are extremely difficult to kill properly, but that is because you cannot avoid damage, so it's not even a challenge, it's up to RNG. The small rooms add to this problem and the points mentioned above seal the coffin. Nobu is cheesed whenever it's killed nowadays and Mitsuhide has never been killed since the changes Erox implemented with Sushi.

I could go on and list more reasons, but these 3 are the most important ones and cover the main reasons why this content is not used much.

 

Suggestions:
My suggestions are designed with the disclaimer in mind, and to make these bosses feel like challenging, end-game content with the highest difficulty, since they offer the best rewards in the game. Endgame PVE content at the highest level should be as challenging if not more than endgame PVP. 

• Instance the boss room: The boss should only be able to be entered with a party of up to 4 (this is based on the mechanic that the snake boss and spider boss both have). The reasoning behind this is to keep integrity of the boss's difficulty, so that you cannot just zerg it down with many people; it is an actual difficult encounter that must be prepared for accordingly. This also addresses the cheese strats that are used by going outside of the room and re-entering for easy boss kills.
• Reduce boss HP dramatically: Bosses indeed should be stronger as the difficulty gets harder, but just increasing HP and damage is not an elegant solution. Right now encounters take so long even with a full DPS team, that it is one of the reasons they are hardly killed. Boss fights should get harder due to the difficult mechanics the boss offers, which leads me to the final and most important suggestion.
• Add difficult, challenging mechanics to the boss so that it is fun and rewarding to kill: This point is up to the staff to implement how they see fit, but I have some suggestions below in more detail.

 

Boss Mechanic Suggestions:
For these, I'm going to be using General Nobu as an example, but the same can be applied to Admiral Mitsuhide. These are just to show what kind of ideas I mean. To move between phases, if difficult to implement, can be replaced with a whole new coded boss that has the mechanics of that particular phase (with a cutscene or similar in between phase swaps). 

Boss has "Phases" at different HP thresholds (These can be changed, but my recommendation is 80%, 60%, 40% and 20%). 
1. 100% - 80%: No change, it's just fighting the boss normally with his current skills and movement

2. 80% - 60%: The boss spawns 4 Golden Samurai/Penguins/Snow leopards periodically in all corners of the room until the end of the phase (marked by the blue crosses).


3. 60% - 40%: The boss periodically drops fire on the ground, where you will take consistent damage if you stay on those tiles (this mechanic is not yet implemented in game as is, but I got the idea from the auto-kill rooms e.g. when you fail the slot bot challenge). An example is spikes appearing in the tiles marked in pink:

These tiles frequently change during the course of this phase

4. 40% - 20%: The boss occasionally does a charged up attack in an idle animation. The player party must do XXX amount of damage during this animation, or everyone will be killed (damage value can be modified, but I think 1000 damage in this time is reasonable). When doing this attack, he can have some sort of aura around him to signal the players, this is his DPS check.

5. 20% - 0%: The boss goes in rage mode, flickering more often, doing much higher damage and shooting jutsu out more frequently until the end of the kill. 

Rewards:
IMO the boss encounter should be finished by entering a sort of chest room. In this chest room, there are always guarenteed rewards inside chests (can be implemented like mailboxes) that can be looted, to reward a player party for finishing such a difficult encounter, and encouraging them to repeat it often. The drop table should be random and large, with items being rolled randomly at the end, such as:
- 10 Blanks
- Flat Ryo (100-1000)
- Unique drops (Blood iron fan, Claymore)
- 100x of a mob drop (e.g. snake venom, cocoons, iron pieces)

Conclusion:
As always please keep comments on point to the topic. I believe the addition of difficulty and a fun challenge using game mechanics already implemented (mostly :D) could revive this end-game content and really make it an integral, difficult challenge for PvE, with great rewards.

Editors note: One of the main reasons I'm making this post is because difficult and fun PvE content with great rewards is a repeatable activity, which does not rely on many other players for content. Land of iron has the opportunity to do that with these bosses.

[Music]

Not the only thing that needs a rework for LoI, mobs outside are way to tanky forcing you to do this as a team.

For the bosses i understand but up untill that point that entire questline is a pain in the art, lower the mobs HP across the board and lower the amount of items requiered ie : beaks,iron,tails- Good suggestion nonetheless.

[Black Rain]

11 minutes ago, Shinigami said:

lower the mobs HP across the board and lower the amount of items requiered ie : beaks,iron,tails- Good suggestion nonetheless.

While I agree that should be the case if nothing happens to the bosses, I think adding high time requirement on bosses that every end-game player would want to do is good, because then more people spend time in land of iron, which is a danger zone so it adds more PVP content aswell. 

[Fuketzu]

I think majory of the problems of this game, is that WORK ---------------------------- reward: -----

[Black Rain]

Just now, Fuketzu said:

I think majory of the problems of this game, is that WORK ---------------------------- reward: -----

I 100% agree, I have amended a section for this, thanks !

"Rewards:
IMO the boss encounter should be finished by entering a sort of chest room. In this chest room, there are always guarenteed rewards inside chests (can be implemented like mailboxes) that can be looted, to reward a player party for finishing such a difficult encounter, and encouraging them to repeat it often. The drop table should be random and large, with items being rolled randomly at the end, such as:
Blanks
Flat Ryo (100-1000)
Unique drops (Blood iron fan, Claymore)
100x of a mob drop (e.g. snake venom, cocoons, iron pieces)"

[Fuketzu]

Just now, Black Rain said:

I 100% agree, I have amended a section for this, thanks !

"Rewards:
IMO the boss encounter should be finished by entering a sort of chest room. In this chest room, there are always guarenteed rewards inside chests (can be implemented like mailboxes) that can be looted, to reward a player party for finishing such a difficult encounter, and encouraging them to repeat it often. The drop table should be random and large, with items being rolled randomly at the end, such as:
Blanks
Flat Ryo (100-1000)
Unique drops (Blood iron fan, Claymore)
100x of a mob drop (e.g. snake venom, cocoons, iron pieces)"

Ye, i think, that if rory ever reads this, he needs to start giving better/atleast a REWARD, for do difficult things/tedious things, cause most of the time we work alot for something but wont get anything out of it, or what we get, is nothing, as example bandits arc right now, around 40-50  blood vials for tools, yes, the missions gives alot but after the mission each boss gives like 1 blood vial lol, thats not even worth to think.

[Raw]

Great thought, and effort in this suggestion, love it.

Boss mechanics would be beautiful!

[Fuketzu]

and most of the bosses are easy as his 'way' to kill them, but its just tedious needing to repeat the same for like 20 minutes for kill it, more like fun, its like : Repeat the same you did the first time 100 times more and get the chance of get a drop that has 0.5% chance of dropping! boring..

[Etsu]

Love your suggestions, Land Of Iron have so much potential but it's in very sad state rn. 
I hope someone will consider that and let people actually enjoy LoI and try themselve in more intresting challange.

[Fuketzu]

Mitsuhide Resume:

1: Hit
1: Destiny
1: BI
1: Visit to hosp
1: -100 ryo
1: 8 minutes 

[Pastel]

Love this suggestion, as someone who has put hundreds of hours into LOI, its been quite dull in its current state for "endgame" content compared to the newer arcs like the land of waves lvl 20 arc and bandits lvl 40 arc which both feel rewarding to do while LOI just aint it, as expressed in the post. 

[Strength]

I wouldn't like it to be instanced. Currently you can kill General Nobu solo since you are able to walk out and regen when you take hits.
Since not many people do the Land of Iron questline it is hard to find people to do it with so if it was made in a way where you are unable to solo at least one boss it would be a rather poor change.

Mobs in general need a rework in how they behave. I don't think that there's a good way to increase the difficulty of doing bosses until their AI is improved. While your suggestion is cool it doesn't really improve what the boss itself does, it mostly adds some annoying gimmics to the encounter but it wouldn't be that much more mechanically challenging than it is currently, it would just require more people to kill the boss.

Mobs/bosses need to stop hitting through subs, they should have dashes of some sort, they should have different move speed (currently all mobs move at the same speed), their jutsu should be more unique and not just OP versions of jutsu we currently have.

I do agree that there should be a guaranteed drop of some sort to make your time more worthwhile. The best one would probably be for them to drop stacks of iron pieces when killed. There could even be some sort of shop in Land of Iron where you can buy stuff with iron pieces (tools, weapons or cosmetics).

[Elevenswords]

Great post with alot of interestant ideas that arent that hard to pull off that would dramastically change late game pve content for the best. +1 pls add this @Erox

[Black Rain]

9 minutes ago, Strength said:

I wouldn't like it to be instanced. Currently you can kill General Nobu solo since you are able to walk out and regen when you take hits.
Since not many people do the Land of Iron questline it is hard to find people to do it with so if it was made in a way where you are unable to solo at least one boss it would be a rather poor change.

While I agree it's nice that you can kill it like this, the boss was never intended to be a hit and run out of room (which is why the changes were implemented by Sushi and Erox). This is also the main reason people can cheese the boss without any challenge. 
As an end game boss, you WANT challenge, you don't want everyone to be able to do it to keep the rewards that are insanely strong rare and an achievement for players who can actually finish difficult end-game content. 

While the other things you've mentioned make sense, they are not implemented anywhere in game currently, which is why they are not mentioned in this post. It was specifically to re-use already in-game mechanics to make for a more difficult, interesting and rewarding encounter (that can be added much more quickly than creating a whole new set of mechanics never used inside nin)

[Strength]

10 minutes ago, Black Rain said:

While I agree it's nice that you can kill it like this, the boss was never intended to be a hit and run out of room (which is why the changes were implemented by Sushi and Erox). This is also the main reason people can cheese the boss without any challenge. 
As an end game boss, you WANT challenge, you don't want everyone to be able to do it to keep the rewards that are insanely strong rare and an achievement for players who can actually finish difficult end-game content. 

While the other things you've mentioned make sense, they are not implemented anywhere in game currently, which is why they are not mentioned in this post. It was specifically to re-use already in-game mechanics to make for a more difficult, interesting and rewarding encounter (that can be added much more quickly than creating a whole new set of mechanics never used inside nin)

If you are soloing it, it is in no way "cheese without any challenge". It takes me almost half an hour to kill and if I mess up even slightly I die and the boss resets.

Most of the things you mentioned aren't in the game though. Mobs don't behave differently based on their health, there's no periodically spawning jutsu and there's no jutsu that stop once the mob took enough damage. If there's already work to be done on bosses/mobs, it would be more efficient if their behavior was reworked as a whole since it's not just LoI bosses that are not fun and challenging, it's all the bosses/mobs in the game.

[Black Rain]

9 minutes ago, Strength said:

If you are soloing it, it is in no way "cheese without any challenge". It takes me almost half an hour to kill and if I mess up even slightly I die and the boss resets.

I have solo'd both bosses over 100 times each, which should provide background into my reply here:

While I agree, the time to kill them is completely ridiculous, the skill required is very low. They do not 1 shot you anymore, and most players can tank 2 hits + a jutsu special attack before losing all of their HP. Because the room is so small, it is not very difficult to leave the room the moment you mess up once and just regen your HP and cooldowns. This is not challenging, it is rather just boring and repetitive as it does not require much skill at all - any average player can replicate this without much effort.

9 minutes ago, Strength said:

Most of the things you mentioned aren't in the game though

They are not present in a single mob yes, but they do exist around the game (snake boss spawns mobs, spider boss is instanced, tiles that do damage are present). The exception to this is the DPS check (which is why I included the disclaimer in the top of the post). This along with the fact that the boss once killed in each phase can be replaced with the same icon, but a different boss to update the mechanics is the reason the post is presented in this way (Mentioned in the "Boss mechanics" part).

Again the idea is something that can be implemented with minimal work.

 

[Enver]

Adding mechanics to bosses is the only way to save PVE in this game.

[Savagelli]

When we fixing running speed tho

[Ainz Ooal Gown]

It's lonely at the top.

I've personally killed General Nobu over 2300 times since release and support this post 100%. I've also killed Admiral Mitsuhide over 500 times. The sheer stupidity of boss jutsu's being able to pierce sub is ridiculous and should've been fixed a long time ago.

Currently both bosses are just bad game design but I'll tell you what Rory has said "I didn't create these bosses for players to farm 10 hours a day, I want a random player to kill it one time for fun and feel like the luckiest player in the game when a weapon drops" <---This is his ethos behind boss design, therefore his vision in his mind is the correct way and he will completely ignore any and all suggestions other wise. This is a dictatorship, in which Lord Rory rules with an Iron fist.

[Slifer]

On 3/8/2022 at 5:23 AM, Ainz Ooal Gown said:

Currently both bosses are just bad game design but I'll tell you what Rory has said "I didn't create these bosses for players to farm 10 hours a day, I want a random player to kill it one time for fun and feel like the luckiest player in the game when a weapon drops" <---This is his ethos behind boss design, therefore his vision in his mind is the correct way and he will completely ignore any and all suggestions other wise. This is a dictatorship, in which Lord Rory rules with an Iron fist.

Bro did he actually say this lmaooooo

 

That is an awful take from our lord and savior Ueda. 

[Seifer]

On 3/8/2022 at 6:23 AM, Ainz Ooal Gown said:

I want a random player to kill it one time for fun and feel like the luckiest player in the game when a weapon drops

Sadly, there is a flaw here. You need others to kill the boss so, while that one person feels the luckiest player, all others involved feel the unluckiest. The net happiness is negative.