The latest Twitch had 3 named mobs.
-The Big Snake
-The Wraith
-The Giant Collared Dude
The Big Snake looked to me, to be your standard, run of the mill "Named Mob". You're Emperor Crush or Undead Bartender. A mob that is on a short-ish respawn, but has placeholder spawns. The Big Snake is something a group can camp.
The Wraith was part of a quest line. Started in the village with Anna. Found the brother at the cave entrance. Talked to the friendly wraith and got the key. Entered the room, Wraith yelled at you and started spawning enemies.
Would this be considered a "Triggered Event"? Once the Wraith is defeated, can a group camp in that room until he spawns again? Or is he part of the script and will only respawn when that door is Unlokced with the key? Will the Key poof once its used to open the door? Will questlines, like this one, be repeatable? If your whole group gets the key from the friendly wraith, can you repeat/respawn the Wraith 6 times consecutively? Player 1 uses key. Group kills Wraith. Group exits chamber. Player 2 uses key. Group kills wraith. Group exits chamber....etc etc etc.
The third named was the Giant Collared Dude. Is this an example of a Zone Boss? Big bad ass in the far reaches of a zone. Has an extra long respawn time (6-24 hours?) and no placeholders? Maybe even beef him up to be a "Low Level Raid Target" as was mentioned during the stream.
Anywoo. I just thought it was interesting that they showed us 3 different types of Named encounters. And encouraging that this type of variety will exist at the lower levels of the game.
I would hope that if there was a triggered encounter like that, it would be programmed in such a way as to reward every member of the group for it. I always found the idea of repeating quests like that to be super tedious and unnecessary.
Historically, triggered events are generally only triggerable until the quest is completed. Once completed, your character lacks the item or flag required to initiate the event. This obviously doesn't apply to triggered bosses that aren't required for a quest. An example would be the Cursed cycle in Ssraeshza Temple. The only thing preventing it from being triggered is that the prerequisite trigger mobs are spawned, which takes a long time.
I would be OK with a one-time gear reward for triggered quest events. It wouldn't prevent me from doing them again with other groups as long as I'm still gaining XP from kills. From the looks of it, these triggered events will be happening in popular XP areas anyway, so I guess I don't really see the tedium?
My observations regarding the mob bosses....
Snake was pretty straight forward, nothing special
Wraith..mentioned many things that could be lore related. there were also shadowy doors on 3 sides of the rooms. not sure if you can go through them or if you need an artifact to open them or what.
Big guy colossus...big hp, didnt hit hard. i expect him to be tweeked. imagine he is part of the zone lore too. he was NOT a zone boss. remember...the long bridge they showed led to the lower part of the dungeon which is a full blown raid area. who knows what's down there. the screen shots on the site may give us hints. ...
First Boss - Boa - Molnea
Fairly straight forward at this point, early level 12-13 named, nothing special but early stages, he will change
Second Boss - Wraith - Gnashura, The Uncounted Prince
Very technical and strat heavy fight, we made that look a lot easier than it actually was, I can guarantee you that he will kick your arse multiple times before you figure his strat out, we only barely got him down after losing Joppa, our tank, due to carrying Cohh through the fight as he has no knowledge of the strat and we wanted it that way for the stream. Also not his final version but close.
Third Boss - Colossus - Malthyr's Colossi
Very hard hitting tanka nd spank but Joppa had very high-level gear for his characters level and we all (except Cohh) knew what to expect so both healers were focussed on Joppa but again, not the final version of this fight, he will however, be a tough cookie when you guys get to see him in person ;)
Everything you saw was still a work in progress but we just wanted to show the mechanics of the fights off and the content itself, the bosses will be fun and challenging by the time you folks get to fight them :)
I really wouldn't look too far into this stuff yet. Once the art is done and all zone are added they are going to go back through the game in a second pass and a lot of mobs/placements/named etc. are likely to change. At this point it's for demonstration/testing purposes only.
Towards the end of Vanguard testing they completely changed some zones, some looked totally different. I know it's not the same game but that doesn't exclude this game from a second pass to clean things up. A year from now their attitude towards mob placements and such may change enough where they have to go back through the game to change the original stuff to match a new philosophy.