Overview
- Mechanic in a video game is referring to a fixed course of action, which needs to be taken to properly advance in a specific game situation.
- The term is mostly used for non-obvious (re)actions, which need to be learned in order to advance, but by definition includes any such action. E.g. having to block a skull attack is a very obvious game mechanic, while an example for a more complex mechanic would be avoiding the Cyberadication while fighting Brainiac in the Brainiac: The Command Ship raid:
- Periodically Brainiac will teleport to the middle of the room at approximately 25/50/75% health and generate a shield, while preparing a powerful attack and having an orange icon above his head.
- There will be three terminals in the room that players will need to activate quickly to remove the shield, and then a player will need to lunge Brainiac to counter him.
- If Brainiac isn't interrupted in time (approximately 10 seconds from when his shield goes up) he will unleash a powerful shockwave (Cyberadication) to the group. In the normal version of the raid this will deal large damage, however in the elite version this will likely cause a group wipe.
- Especially raids may feature more complex mechanics. However many of those are hinted by on-screen texts or audio tells, so players would be able to prepare and react properly if paying attention.
- In elite and elite plus instances, failing mechanics is almost always lethal. On the other hand instances can be finished even by average players by properly following the required mechanics.