Arenas and Lairs in Bless Unleashed
Starting at level 5, players are able to access and participate in Arena Challenges. An Arena Challenge brings the excitement and challenge of an Elite Monster and Field Boss to an instanced arena designed for 2 players. An Arena Challenge limits players to a more confined space where retreat is not an option. Players must make use of their limited space and work together with an ally to complete each Arena Challenge. Each challenge brings with it a new enemy with unique mechanics that players must learn to overcome.
Lair Challenges become available at level 27 and allow groups of 5 to take the fight straight to the Elite Monster’s lair. Similar to an Arena Challenge, players are confined to a space with no option to retreat during battle but these spaces will vary depending on the enemy you are facing. You can take on the Wolf King in his den or travel to the Crimson Waterfall to battle against Mariel the Mad Water Spirit.
We were able to sit down with Seewon Park, the Combat Designer working on Bless Unleashed, to gain some insights into what went into the creation of Arena and Lair Challenges.
Bless Unleashed: What were your goals when designing these challenges for players?
Seewon Park: Most of the bosses available in the challenges are Elite Monsters or Field Bosses that can be encountered out in the world but when you battle them in these challenges the experience will be entirely different. When you introduce large groups of players to a boss battle in the open world, the overall experience may not work as intended by the designer. The space is large and unrestricted, you can escape in a dangerous situation. Because the Boss attacks are more dispersed between the many players, the overall risk is relatively low. Enemy attacks become more meaningful and the decisions made by individual players also become a lot more important in the Arena and Lair Challenges because players are unable to retreat and there are less allies to rely on during battle.
Bless Unleashed: What would you say is the biggest difference between an Arena Challenge and a Lair Challenge?
Seewon Park: I think the biggest difference between the 2 person and 5 person challenges is how important it is to work with your allies. The Arena Challenges require cooperation with your ally but are designed to require less proficiency and understanding of the enemy throughout the battle. Most of the time, you should be able to overcome a boss by just avoiding his attacks and focusing on helping your ally if they are in danger of dying. Lair Challenges, on the other hand, have a lot of factors in which one player’s actions can affect the rest of their group. One wrong move can lead to the death of others in the group. It is important to understand how each attack a boss has works and relaying that information to your allies. Working together is the key to successfully complete each Lair Challenge.
Bless Unleashed: Do you have a specific challenge that you like best among the challenge content? Why do you like that challenge the most?
Seewon Park: I would have to pick the 5-person Lair Challenge called Harpy Queen’s Nest. This challenge is the first one we created. There were many restrictions on the various functions that were available at the time of development, so there were many things I wanted to show and convey but was unable to initially. In the end, we succeeded in creating the experience we wanted using various “tricks” but this led to some stability issues that we had to fix along with developing and replacing functions within the encounter.
I also liked this challenge because it is the simplest way to show what the Lair Challenges are all about. There are no differences between the attacks used by the Harpy Queen in the open world and Aelo, the Harpy Queen found in the Lair Challenge. However the experience completely changes when the players are having to avoid these attacks on a floating platform. Retreating from battle in the open world against the Harpy Queen doesn’t really matter but depending on where you fled in the Lair Challenge, your entire group could die. This challenge is a very simple and good example that shows the type of experience that these 5-person challenges offer.
Bless Unleashed: What was the most difficult part when planning / developing the 2-person and 5-person challenges?
Seewon Park: There were two major difficulties in planning / developing the challenge content. It was difficult to make the boss fights as intended in a confined space. Many of the bosses were designed with the intention of fighting out in the world and moving very aggressively. If the bosses were just walking, jumping, or rushing to a player’s position like in many other MMORPGs, it would not have been an issue. In Bless Unleashed, bosses often move in various directions when using their attacks. It was designed to deliver more natural movements and allow players to learn those movements. This increases the difficulty when in a confined space once the boss starts moving. To resolve this, we had to write very complex AI to estimate, calculate, and use the various cases that the boss may encounter during the challenge content.
Another difficulty was that one boss must constantly create a sense of danger for multiple players. In a typical action game players often fight alone against bigger enemies, while our game is based on the experience of multiple players fighting a boss. As a result, the attacks from the boss are often distributed between the different players engaging it. Even if a boss is using a powerful attack, only a few players will draw the threat and be attacked while the rest are able to freely attack the boss. If the boss doesn’t threaten you or offer any challenge, the battle can become boring. There have been many discussions and various attempts to overcome this problem. Boss behaviors we implemented to engage as many players as possible include powerful attacks that sweep through large areas, additional enemies being summoned to attack multiple players, and projectile attacks. Applying these mechanics, testing them, and adjusting them was fun and challenging for our team. The Chamber of the Ancient Lair Challenge makes use of many of these mechanics and is the most difficult challenge content currently available. I would highly recommend experiencing the various dangers and fun provided by this challenge content.
Bless Unleashed: Do you plan on adding additional Arena and Lair Challenges in the future?
Seewon Park: Yes, I will continue to add more challenges. The goal is for our players to be able to experience new challenging content as often as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Seewon Park
