Special Boss Fight Idea
This thread is about an idea I came up with that I thought I should share. If that doesn't interest you, you really shouldn't waste your time reading any further
I've been having more and more issues with MapleStory thanks to the most recent Unleashed/Unlimited patch. I have stuff to do, and more ambitious goals, but I don't really feel like I'm having fun at the moment. This got me to start thinking what I wish MapleStory were like.. or at least, some content I wish existed. I started thinking about the massive boss fight that was announced in RED teaser video, which had something about a boss fight where 100 maplers could versus one very strong boss.
One of my complaints against Maple at the moment is what seems to be a lack of necessity to team up to fight a boss... people focus so much on being able to solo. With the new damage cap of 50,000,000, solo-ing is an even bigger focus since the real limiter to your damage is now your equips rather than some arbitrary damage limit. I thought... what could possibly break the grasp on the desire to solo?
Then I came up with an idea: what if there was a massive boss (where 100+ people can team up from around the server(s)) who had a special ability: a shield/aura/ability that becomes stronger depending on how strong your attacks are. That's really just a cover story though, my real thought was "What if this boss reduced your damage using a logarithmic equation," but the cover story sounds better.
What if your damage to the boss was determined by this equation: actualDamage = ceil(log(damage / 1000) * 1000)
"actualDamage" meaning how much you decrease the boss' health and "damage" being how much damage you would have done if this were any other boss.
Since nobody likes math, here's a table of example damage values translated for you:
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-----------Damage-------ActualDamage----------
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Damage: 100,000,000 -> 11513
Damage: 90,000,000 -> 11408
Damage: 80,000,000 -> 11290
Damage: 70,000,000 -> 11157
Damage: 60,000,000 -> 11003
Damage: 50,000,000 -> 10820
Damage: 40,000,000 -> 10597
Damage: 30,000,000 -> 10309
Damage: 20,000,000 -> 9904
Damage: 10,000,000 -> 9211
Damage: 9,000,000 -> 9105
Damage: 8,000,000 -> 8988
Damage: 7,000,000 -> 8854
Damage: 6,000,000 -> 8700
Damage: 5,000,000 -> 8518
Damage: 4,000,000 -> 8295
Damage: 3,000,000 -> 8007
Damage: 2,000,000 -> 7601
Damage: 1,000,000 -> 6908
Damage: 900,000 -> 6803
Damage: 800,000 -> 6685
Damage: 700,000 -> 6552
Damage: 600,000 -> 6397
Damage: 500,000 -> 6215
Damage: 400,000 -> 5992
Damage: 300,000 -> 5704
Damage: 200,000 -> 5299
Damage: 100,000 -> 4606
Damage: 90,000 -> 4500
Damage: 80,000 -> 4383
Damage: 70,000 -> 4249
Damage: 60,000 -> 4095
Damage: 50,000 -> 3913
Damage: 40,000 -> 3689
Damage: 30,000 -> 3402
Damage: 20,000 -> 2996
Damage: 10,000 -> 2303
Damage: 9,000 -> 2198
Damage: 8,000 -> 2080
Damage: 7,000 -> 1946
Damage: 6,000 -> 1792
Damage: 5,000 -> 1610
Damage: 4,000 -> 1387
Damage: 3,000 -> 1099
Damage: 2,000 -> 694
Damage: 1,000 -> 0
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Note: this is [b]not[/b] handled line-by-line. The "damage" refers to your total damage per attack. That's why I made the table go above cap (50m). This is important because it makes all classes equal; certain classes have a distinct advantage when it comes to the number of lines per attack.
With this system someone hitting very high (50m per attack) would do 10.8k damage, while someone hitting average (1m per attack) would do 6.9k damage. Someone who just barely started the game and only hits 10k damage would still do 2.3k damage to the boss.
What's the point? A super-funded person is only about twice as good as a funded character, and a funded character is only about twice as good as an unfunded character. You don't have to rely on a small group of OP people in order to kill the boss... just bring a few friends. Of course, being super-funded (or even just semi-funded) is still an advantage: you count as [b]four people[/b] just by yourself! To me, that's actually pretty strong. It's no-where near strong enough to solo, of course, but that's the point. No single person should equal hundreds (or even thousands) of un-funded people...
Another thought that crossed my mind was multiplying your actual damage by your level. In other words, a level 250 hitting 50m = 10.8k * 250 = 2.7m while a level 50 hitting 30k = 3.4k * 50 = 170k. This gives an interesting incentive to level up, and it makes your damage depend more heavily on your level rather than your funding (pre-BB style <3 ), since an unfunded level 200 hitting 100k (921k) out-damages a super-funded level 100 hitting 500k (621k).
One problem this whole system could create is botters being able to bring thousands of weak people to defeat the boss. Of course, this boss should have certain restrictions to help prevent that, such as "you must have played for X amount of time" and "you must be at least level X" in order to challenge the boss. It would also help to have the boss be an event-only boss that is always supervised by at least one GM, as long as the events are frequent-ish (once every 1~3 weeks?).
Rewards, whatever they may be, would be distributed in whatever way Nexon has already decided (for the real 100 person boss). It obviously can't just drop them, considering 100 people fighting for drops would be crazy.
Also note, this system is only intended for 1, maybe 2, special boss fights. You can't change all of MapleStory (or even just all MapleStory bosses), because that would ruin the incentive to spend money funding yourself. No one is going to spend $1,000 on their character just to make him twice as strong as a new player. You still need all of the regular bosses/mobs to motivate people to open their wallets.
Thoughts? Ideas? Modifications? Additions? Think it's the next best thing since sliced bread? Think it's the stupidest thing you ever heard? You should totally comment. You know you want to ~
3 Comments • Newest first
[quote=Conqueror]I like the idea, but what about %boss?[/quote]
The shield/ability/whatever is the very last thing applied. So your %boss would go towards your "what you could have done" damage, and then your actual damage will be calculated. Otherwise %boss would dominate and we go to funded people being 20 times a normal person.
[quote=CommanderKSer]but wouldnt that make fast attacking moves beat slow and heavy attackers easily?[/quote]
That's a great point actually. The fast attackers hitting lower wouldn't be as affected... It's actually just another version of the hit-per-attack problem where classes are not even close to balanced...
I suppose one way to address this would be to "collect" all damage done over the course of a short period of time (1~10 seconds) and treat that as your "what you could have done" damage, and then actually apply the damage as if it were one big attack. This way everyone is pretty much equal. There shouldn't be any way to tell when your damage is applied; that way people can't abuse the system by timing their attacks/buffs.
To clarify what would happen on your screen, I'd say just display your damage as-is and apply any effects (knock-back, etc) as if you had actually done the damage, just don't actually take away the boss HP until the time period (see above) has passed.
They already are putting a boss like that in the RED update or at least the 100 people vs the boss part
Can we get a tl;dr here?