[quote]I really don't see how difficult these raids can be with only 6 players in a game with such limited mechanics. Shoot the enemies till they die; maybe shoot different body parts with different elemental weapons being the most complex mechanic which is not complex at all.[/quote] Go watch any WoW raid videos. Extrapolate.

I doubt many mechanics from WoW will be transferable into an fps.

[quote]I doubt many mechanics from WoW will be transferable into an fps.[/quote] Why? We have grenades with AoE effects. Splash damage. Environmental effects aren't hard to implement. Enrage timers would be easy to add. We have elemental damage and immunities. The devil walker literally spawns more adds, has a stomp attack, proximity attack(shock grenades) and has phases you need to learn. We can jump, slide and glide/double jump/jet pack around.

I think you might be exaggerating the Devil Walker at least a tad. It has phases to learn; you cannot be serious right now.

How am I exaggerating? It has multiple attacks, in a pattern and you need to destroy it piece by piece. It is a simple mini-boss and even it has to be approached tactically. We got a tiny Beta and this was one of the bosses we faced. Can you not extrapolate from this to see how unique challenges will be presented to us even with mini-bosses?

Here's a few difficulty additions that I can think of, and I don't even do this for a living. - Different elemental types needed at different types of the battle. At first, only Arc damage can hurt the boss and Void damage actually heals him. Everyone with Void weapons/abilities do NOT attack the boss, only focus adds. Then, he changes. Solar is only one that can hurt him and Arc HEALS him. Everyone that was hurting him with Arc needs to immediately STOP and change weapons or focus adds. This is a complexity that requires communication and for all 6 people to be paying attention. - Standing in different areas cause you to immediately die if you're there for too long. Or you do more damage by standing in a certain area. Or less damage. - You need to have 4 members standing on one area, while 1 stands in another, and your final member stands in a completely different area. If you don't have the right amount of people on each area, adds keep coming out until you do. Or the boss doesn't take any damage until all 3 spots have the right amount of people standing in such area. - Everyone has to jump at a certain time and be mid-air or your insta-die. The boss does a huge ground stomp shockwave that covers the entire area. If you don't jump, you die, period. Not even a titan focused in armor will live through it. Communication is key to warn everyone it's coming. That's just a few ideas. You could have combinations of these. And even more stuff that I didn't even come up with in the few minutes. They have teams of people dedicated to coming up with these mechanics. I guarantee they have come up with more complex ways to push your traditional FPS mindset :).

I appreciate your effort and what you say sounds good but when you think about it surely you expected all of those things to be in many boss fights regardless of game or genre. Having the change the element of your gun, ok that what I basically said already it's the same thing. Does that really require a lot communication to notice you aren't doing damage anymore? Having to stand on a certain area or insta-die. Ok this isn't overly complex even as an 8 year old back in '98 playing Crash Bandicoot I understood this concept. Players have to stand in a certain area. Ok I'd imagine there is some really obvious button or some kind of indicator of where to stand. You'd like to think with 2 minutes of trial and error people would figure this out. Boss shockwaves are standard play, I'd be shocked if most of them throughout the game didn't have this. Avoiding these shockwaves don't require communication man, you are clutching a little bit on this one, all anyone needs is functioning eyes to know to jump. I don't mean to be negative or undermind what Bungie claim they are doing with raids; but there have been devs that have made big promises in the past and utterly failed to deliver and they probably outnumber, by a large margin, those who actually did deliver. In reality it is an fps and as an fps it is targetted at the lowest demomination so I wouldn't expect much more than just larger scaled and more time consuming strikes. You are welcome to quote me and call me an idiot at release If I'm completely wrong.

I agree with you, that most average and better than average players would notice these things. But, all it would take is 1 person not paying attention, or just blindly shooting, to absolutely ruin your raid. Wouldn't you agree? That one person who keeps shooting the boss, healing him, not paying attention to a health bar just blindly going to town. Or dying on every shockwave. Or not hitting the button. If you've done Raid MM before you know there's always that 1-2 people who don't give a damn, and will do whatever they please, and not care what the rest of the raid does. Then, they'll yell at everyone for sucking and leave lol. I have no doubt you are more than capable. I have no doubt that 75% of the people that would partake in MM would be capable. But, 25% I'd venture to guess are not raiding material. And it'll only take 1 person to spoil your raid, sadly. If not. If you can honestly do the raid with 5 people trying and one person not contributing, then Bungie is lying about making them so hard you need all 6 people communicating and working together.

I'm definitely on your side with everything you are saying here and because of that I totally agree with the exclusion of MM. I just don't think it's going to be so difficult to the point it's going to require much real communication or properly planned out tactics especially when the five player I'll be playing with are all competant.