@neocalypso said:
It's pretty god damned annoying that nobody seems to be able to convey what actually makes these stupid raids so hard. They are always so pointlessly vague about it when it's just a shooter so It can't really be all that complicated.
I don't know that I'm the person to be answering this, since I've neither participated in the Vault of Glass nor watched a single playthrough from front to back.
But I did catch some of it on stream last night.
Saddle up. This could be a long--and completely inaccurate--post.
---
It looked like, matter of factly, that the raid's difficulty is dictated by two factors:
1) The number of moving parts in the combat scenarios.
2) DPS -- that is, the DPS typhoon the bosses and infinite mobs can dole out + the relative lack of damage players do to both of those entities.
Concerning Point 1: Players (in the scenario I witnessed) aren't fighting a boss and squads of regular enemies in a simple shoot-em-up. The boss has a shield that can only be deactivated (for a few seconds at a time) with a raid-specific weapon. Some kind of sword. The player wielding the sword can only deactivate the boss's defenses if they have built up their super ability, something that regenerates once every few minutes, or more quickly if Orbs of Light are dropped when other supers nearby are used.
When the shield is deactivated, it only remains so for a couple beats. This is more or less Point 2 in totality--players don't hurt the boss very much, and when they do, they can't hurt it for more than a few breathless moments every few minutes. The high-level enemies and boss, however, can leave an entire team in cinders with one or a few well-placed attacks, or as a result of lapses of judgment/coordination on the part of the team.
Meanwhile, as the team struggles in this war of attrition, entities called Oracles spawn around the boss room, which is large and intricate. The Oracles generate a team-wide debuff that are removed by being within close proximity to a point very close to the boss location. Basically directly underneath the boss itself.
As the players fight against these Oracles and the boss and the mobs coming in endless droves, the boss will trap individual players inside red globes. These globes can only be destroyed by another player, and will kill those trapped inside if not destroyed promptly. I'm talking, like, within a matter of seconds. While inside the globe, the player can still fire their weapons, but cannot move and will still suffer damage from enemy fire. Nearer to the end of the battle, multiple players will be caged inside globes at once.
So, the raid requires a lot of communication simply because there are numerous situations that offer incredibly brief actionable windows. If you don't have a complete and total awareness of the situation, you will miss an opportunity. And that missed opportunity will either prolong an already protracted encounter, leading to odds being further and further stacked against the player team, or will lead to one or more players being killed instantaneously.
And I think what I saw was just the first of three major encounters.
Ultimately, the raid presents as a ferociously-involved combat puzzle. Bungie's penchant for having players incorporate and change engagement strategies in real time (e.g., needing the right gun for the right enemy, flanking and double teaming when necessary) gets turned up to its highest possible zenith.
It struck me as uncontrolled bedlam in a game that, otherwise, doesn't really condition its players to prepare for it.
Log in to comment