City of Heroes/Villains has a dynamic system for creating instances and placing of mobs. Not even that helps the repetiveness though. You learn to recognize the layouts and tiles well enough anyway.
 

For raids and heroics, I don't see why this wouldn't work in theory if balanced correctly, though it would take some time to get the balance right.

For lower difficulty instances, such a balance change would be easier to do due to the lower power of single enemies. it might increase problems with "required classes", though, since without knowing the encounters exactly, people seem more likely to accidentally aggro, or want more pulling distance, and wanting more crowd control and area tanking as a result.
 

I would like to see more dynamic instances, maybe even quests. The boss fights would be difficult if they were designed as they are now. But take a boss that has more attacks but are less destructive, it could be very do-able. Or perhaps they would just have an announcement for whenever they used a super move, something to give you a bit of time to react to it.

However this is not an idea for WoW, Blizz is far to stuck in it's ways to switch to something of that nature. It would be more productive to hope for a feature like this to be implemented into a new game than wait for it to show up in WoW. Like the idea that showed up in the comment a while back about a more dynamic aggro range that was based on line of sight (think it was from this blog), it's a very good idea but not gonna happen in WoW.
 

Rogue-like games have been completely dynamic since ages. I guess instances within MMO games could be made that way.
 

Well there are plenty of boss fights in WoW with "pseudo-random" elements to them, which typically cause the usual "we got screwed" complaints among my guild (I don't know about the rest of you)...

1) Prince Malchezaar in Karazhan has his infernals land randomly out on his balcony. Depending on where they land you can have zero problems, or wipe in 2 minutes.

2) Lady Vashj and her "Static Charge" ability combined with her semi-random "hit someone in the raid for 5K" ability. My guild has downed Vashj multiple times and every time we've succeeded it seemed like Vashj was a bit lax with applying her Static Charge. There have been times when she has done it 4 or 5 times in the entire fight, other times she does it 10 times in Phase 1 alone.

And of course that doesn't even count routine pseudo-random events in all boss fights such as chained crushing blows on tanks, DPS who chain crit and pull aggro, etc.

One thing I do miss in WoW is randomly generated dungeon maps like from the Diablo series (and countless other, older RPGs), although I can understand how these would be harder to generate in a true 3D setting.
 

More dynamic would be much better.

I always found the whole tanking mechanic in games like these to be a bit silly as well. That if there is a group of mobs, they'd all just somehow concentrate on the one person who is hardest to kill, rather than spread out and try to kill the squishier people first. So all fights, not just boss fights in a raid dungeon, always basically follow the same pattern: tank goes first, tank gets aggro on everybody, rest of the group joins in. All very predictable.

I guess better AI everywhere, with mobs more able to adapt to different situations in a more human-like way, would be better. Eventually it will come.
 

More dynamic would be nice, at least for the intro. I mean, why do they just stand there waiting on you. Let them lay down, exercise, jump rope, something interesting before the raid shows up.
 

There are whole rooms in Karazhan I've never once been in .. our raids know exactly which path to pick to get to the bosses, which trash to clear, and which trash to ignore.

The layout wouldn't need to be entirely randomly generated from a tileset - bosses could be in different locations, and some doors being locked or unlocked, a bridge could be functional or collapsed, a passage open or blocked with rubble. Thus forcing different exploratory paths while you play hunt the wumpus.
 

No-one has so far commented on the story and the purpose from a story perspective.

I'd say that semi-predictable is preferable. Not the same every time, but the differences follow some logic instead of being just random elements. Which the storyline can provide the foundation for.

City of Heroes/Villains has a dynamic system for creating instances and placing of mobs

As far as I know, the maps are not randomly generated as they are in Anarchy Online. It is rather a set of building blocks which they have built many different instances with.
And placement of mobs in those follow a pretty static pattern, except for the patrols of course.
 

One thing I do miss in WoW is randomly generated dungeon maps like from the Diablo series (and countless other, older RPGs), although I can understand how these would be harder to generate in a true 3D setting.

No so, ever play Dark Cloud 1 or 2? Both have completely random generated dungeons. Yes you could spot the different tiles set, but those games are getting up there in years. I've seen other games do it too, with an array of different results. In this day and age a randomly created dungeon is not that hard to do.

The fact is randomly generated dungeons are only fun in small doses, after awhile you just want the place to be over. It ends up taking a lot of time since there a people like me who have to search every nook and cranny. One or two completely randomly generated dungeons would be alright, but the majority would have to be at least mappable. Randomly placing mobs, treasure, and bosses would be a nice change, though. Too many of the Outland dungeons are nothing more than a single hallway with no choice in the direction you go.
 

Actually.. Blizzard did toy with the idea of randomness in pre-TBC dungeons. Edge of Madness in ZG, Anubisaths in AQ20 and AQ40, extra bosses in Stratholme, LBRS..

The trouble with randomness is that the encounter needs to be balanced using both the worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario. Players do not like to wipe due to no fault of their own. Depending on the randomness, the encounter can be impossible on one try, and laughably easy on the next. Neither option is fun. Less randomness makes it easier to fine-tune the encounter.
 

As mentioned, Blizz has dabbled with dynamic encounters to a degree. Chromaggos's breath, Nefarians draknoids and call, anubashi defenders abilities, preiestess delrissa's adds etc etc.

However the level of dynamics i'm infering from your post (bosses have a large array of abilites that they can choose from), has a couple of problems.

1) Boss abilities have to be true to the boss type dragon/healer/melee dps etc etc. If you give a humanoid boss a tail whip and fiery breath it would look odd. The number of realistic abilites per boss type is limited. Whilst having bosses able to randomly pick from their respective list of potential abilites, doing so would remove the uniqueness from the encounter as all bosses of type x could have the same abilities.

2) The second issue is the difficulty level of the encounter. Certain random ability combinations could make the encounter far too easy or far too hard. The difficulty range on current dynamic encounters is present but limited due to the limit of the dynamics. Increasing the randomness of the encounter broadens this range.

So whilst i'm in favor of increased dynamics, it has to be limited as has been seen previously to still give the encounters uniqueness and not widen the level of difficulty too much.

Essi mentioned improved AI, with smart mobs would be better and eventually come. However i have to completely disagree. If bosses were smart, they would go and one shot your healers, then work their way through your dps and finally tanks. We would still be in MC if mobs were smart.
 

I would welcome very much a more advanced AI in mobs and bosses. Although is doable, i think it would require much more information exchange between the client app and the server. That could mean increased latency for the average connection.

...or maybe they are just cheap. :)
 

Well with instances no matter how random people try to make it, players will always figure out the patterns in the randomness.

If you want randomness, the best way is to move away from instances altogether and work towards buildings dungeons that work equally well with large number or few players running around in them.
 

Complex AI doesn't require anything more from the connection. The server already knows everything your character does. However, complex AI does use a lot of processing power, especially when the said AI has to react to the actions of dozens or hundreds of players instead of just one, like in first-person shooters.

A simple threat table check is simple and thus scales well with the number of NPCs and players. That's why it was used. Thanks to Moore's law, complex AI on a massive scale will eventually be a reality, but it's a tall order for a game that's already several years old.
 

It may be possible to introduce simple types of complexity, though, such as bosses that "try out" a bunch of their abilities, than use the ones that worked most effectively, or bosses that respond to the formation that players take (They would still follow the usual aggro mechanics and such, though.)

In smaller instances, some of the same tricks may be appliable, in addition to randomized patrol patterns and enemy positioning.
 

Random events and abilities can make the boss fight quite fun, I always enjoyed Chrommagus because of the random breaths, and again random waves of mobs on the nefarian fight all make the game a little less of the ordered by the book regimen and more of a fly by the seat of yer pants kinda deal.

Random damage or random picking people in the fight isn't really considered the same I think, the guy who said about Vashj (we had the same experience btw) ect is just not random enough.

Pack a 20-30 different elements to a 3 stage fight but make it easier, would immensely make the fight a different ride altogether.
 

Static encounters (and worlds) are what makes MMORPGs so poor in technical gameplay.

Of course that's also why the RPG moniker is completely inappropriate for them anyway.
 

Randomness is nothing but a poor way to change things up. The problem is randomness trumps skill, so it should always just be part of a fight but not the main part. (Since part of skill is learning to deal with the unexpected).

What I think that person really wants is more intelligent bosses. Let the boss learn each time, just as the players learn.

Of course that means more processing on the server, more expense ... :)

But otherwise, bosses are nothing but puzzles, and the more people you have, the simpler the puzzle needs to be so that 25 people can perform their actions. It's easier to coordinate a small group, so you could conceivably make harder puzzles for a small group, and the hardest puzzle for one person. Which is why single player games are so much harder.
 

It's easier to tune static content than random content.
The current Blizz design is overtune for the hardcore, then nerf over time.
It's 'working' to the tune of 10 million subscribers, so why fix a design that isn't broken?
 

It's simple. If they had stuck to thier initial promises and come back and shook up things occasionally and changed the encounters and the quests etc. Then thier current model would have been Fantastic.
But as it currently stands once they tweak an encounter its the same forever. That sucks beyond belief. Random is an improvement over scripted encounters that don't change for 3 or more years
 

Dynamic bosses would be an improvement. Any time you have a game environment that's not completely formulaic you improve the potential for fun and exciting experiences.

Raid bosses are tuned so hard and require such perfect execution to kill BECAUSE they're static. Since there is a precise 'recipe' for the destruction of the boss, the boss has to be almost unbeatable unless you follow the recipe. Otherwise they're too easy.

Dynamic bosses can be hard by virtue of being dynamic, rather than having monstrously obscene stats and the ability to wipe the entire raid unless people have their timing just right. That's not to say a boss can't have a move that will wipe the players out, but for the most part they should have a wider range of behaviors and abilities that allow them to adapt to the tactics players are using.

Players should need a general idea of a boss's abilities in order to defeat them, but there should be no scripts telling you a play-by-play of how to take them down. A scripted boss fighting a scripted raid -- how dull can you get?
 

I say yes on both accounts (dynamic on abilities and dynamic on AI) I think AI improvements would be more important cuz then they could maybe even use fuzzy logic and other things to react to what you do but not always use the same solution. If their abilities were variable it would be more exciting cuz you wouldn't know what you were walking into, the dungeon would be new each time. Diablo 2 did this to a very weak level with some of the mini bosses.
 

In my opinion, the static nature of PvE fights stems from the predictability of the tank/dps/healer mechanic. Just imagine there were no "aggro list", tanks didn't cause "threat", and bosses always did the most effective thing to damage the group. This would require a radically different approach to class balance, so it's completely out of the question that this will ever happen in WoW. But imagine the implication:

- You'd still have plenty of variation in boss encounters. Even more, I'd say. Bosses might come in groups, like a small arena team, they could have different combinations of spells that you'd need to figure out in order to counter them effectively, and they could even have AI personalities.

- PvE and PvP balance will effectively be the same thing. Every class needs to be able to sustain damage, although there could be interesting variations on how that damage is absorbed (plate vs. mana shield vs. demonic link for example).

- Good instance groups would be composed like good arena teams. Just look at how much more varied arena teams are than typical instance groups.

- However, you'd still have difficulty tuning in terms of gear, loot, organized guilds, and all the other things people like about PvE. The "skill gap" would probably be higher, but I don't view that as a bad thing.

It's an interesting idea IMO, but for many players, the predictability of fights in WoW is a big part of the attraction. There's only a small number of situations that you need to handle in a given instance, and if anything unexpected happens (wrong pull etc.) the group wipes anyway. It's the same reason McDonald's is so successful: the food is not fantastic but good, and you know what to expect.
 

How about make some bosses use specific types of attacks depending on what type of weapon they are wielding, but the twist is if they kill a player they "pickup" (start using) the weapon type that the dead person was wielding.

How's that for a twist of randomness? Sure you can read up and be prepared for what he does with each weapon type, but it will probably still catch you off guard (require you are quick on your feet) when one of your party dies and he changes weapons.