GamersCircle

Kevin Stocker, Content Designer for Champions Online, talks about Lairs in his new Developer Diary at IGN. Lairs are the group instances, the Champions Online version of a dungeon. Normally you think of a dungeon as pretty plain and errr… dungeony. But according to Kevin, lairs are actually where they feature premier content, and show off all of their tech, art and design. Here’s a little snip on boss encounters. Bosses are definitely "the meat" in a MMO. Real meat though, not that mechanically separated crap where they toss in the lips and arseholes. Real grade "A" beef. Vegetarians need not apply.

The meat in every game (in my opinion) is the boss fights. The boss is the guy who can break the rules in order to defeat you, and you might have to learn a few new tricks to put him in his place.
What kind of tricks, you ask? Well, that can vary greatly. Because of the vast number of options that players are given in customization of their characters, we can guarantee very few concrete things about the group makeup. Where in other games you might count on the group having a Priest, Warrior and Rogue, we simply can’t design encounters around those constraints. So the goal is to develop an interesting gimmick within the encounter that doesn’t rely on a particular group makeup.
One example of how we do this is in Andrith Ruins. The main boss, Vikorin the Blind sits immobile on a temple in the center of the room. Without getting too specific (you’ve gotta figure it out yourself!), the positioning of your team can affect what powers he uses. There are several environmental hazards in the room that turn on and off and get more and more hectic and difficult as the fight progresses through three distinct phases. This creates a fun and dynamic fight without being centered around, "the mage needs to decurse."

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