Reprogram Spawns: The Fun of the Game Lies in the Challenge

When a boss calls for reinforcements, the idea is so the boss can attack from afar while letting its pawn-like minions take all the damage. For example, let's look at LPQ. There are three Rombots that need to be killed. Upon the first hit, they'll spawn three Block Golems to help. This is supposed to create such a cluster of mobs that ranged players (archers, Gunslingers, Assassins) become useless, and single-attack based players (F/P Mage, Cleric, Bandit) become ineffective. This is where a good balanced party needs to have a mob-attack character (warriors, I/L Mage, Brawler) in order to get through the spawns faster and start hitting the boss. Rombots, for this example, can respawn another set of 3 Block Golems after enough time passes, so it is important for the party to cut through the spawns as fast as possible.

The problem is the current rules for player attacks is flawed. If there is more than one target, the one with the greater time-stamp since it spawned is the one the player will automatically target first, which means the Rombot will always be targeted first. This means that single-attack based players can get in close enough and attack the Rombots while the Block Golems just roam around not serving a function. (One could argue that they are at least doing damage to you, but the Rombot can do that just fine with its ranged attack, so the Block Golems being there is inconsequential).

The challenge here is that if the party knows they do not have a mob-attack player in the party, then they need to be aware of their weakness and spawn one Rombot at a time rather than all three right away.

"Okay," you might say, "but why should we care about this one stage of Rombots in LPQ?" Well, let's go a couple stages further to Alishar. It is so easy to glitch Alishar and make it absolutely no challenge at all. If your team's Cleric hits Alishar first, then Alishar is aggroed to the Cleric. As long as the Cleric is then relegated to healing duties and not attack any longer, Alishar will not spawn, not curse, and not attack. Alishar will just wander around taking hits from the party until it dies. But what if Alishar was programmed to spawn for each player that attacks it? (Also, what if Alishar curses the entire party on regular intervals? What if Alishar retaliates an attack no matter who hits it? I think that would make Alishar more challenging altogether) Most importantly, if the spawns prevent the party from hitting Alishar, then the purpose of Alishar spawning anything makes sense.

This is true elsewhere. Mano, King Klang, Faust, Dyle, and many other area bosses spawn minions in order to protect themselves and mount a proper attack. It would be even better if these spawns are auto-aggroed to the player attacking the boss. This would make other PQ bosses more challenging as well, like Papa Pixie in OPQ, Lord Pirate in PPQ, and Ergoth in GPQ.

What do you think?

 

Well it doesn't have to be right away or anything, just something to consider for the future. I have faith Kimberly could make this happen, and I also understand if she has bigger fish to fry, but why should we let that get in the way of discussing this future possibility?
Prior to v.55, this is exactly how Alishar and others worked. I'm not completely knocking v.62, I'm just saying it's nerfed from the earlier versions. If this aspect of earlier versions can hybrid with .62 (like a lot of other later additions already made post v.62), I think the game would be even better. If there is one thing a lot of PQs don't have, it's an intelligence test. Going map by map and smashing spawns isn't much of a PQ unless it has some challenge features. OPQ, GPQ, and APQ all have one stage where you have so many chances to unlock the code. Wouldn't LPQ's puzzle stage be better if it had that element rather than a larger KPQ stage? It definitely would be better than hoping someone doesn't go AFK while people fight over whether to use JMS or GMS - and someone yelling about remembering to alt.