Difficulty spikes and poor boss design

Flat difficulty curves are boring. If a mob oneshots you go back and grind.

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Flat difficulty curves are boring. If a mob oneshots you go back and grind.

Yeah, thats a good plan when you know that you will get oneshot or playing softcore. But when you're doing fine without any damage spikes and then just get a freaking oneshot -- that's a bullshit.

What really boring is creating a new character when this shit happened. I died thrice from oneshots from new bosses -- Kitava, Gruthkul and Maligaro. I thought Beta was runned for balancing that bosses, who got invites then? Streamers or players who didn't give feedback to GGG so they can balance content or GGG isn't just listening? Every big patch this shit is happening, players complaining, GGG goes to forums, read a bunch of posts with tears and pictures of penises addressed to developers and only then balance the content. That's sad.

The thing is if you play hardcore you should know the stats you need for every encounter and prepare. If you go blind into the content you have to be way overleveled. Also expect to reroll a few times. But i agree they could prepare players a little more by making the mobs significantly harder before you face a tough encounter. They do that already but maybe not enough. Also they want players to spend time with the new content i think that is why new encounters are a little harder.
I really enjoy the hard bosses i wouldn't mind if they bring act 1-4 on paar with the rest.

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randi wrote:

The thing is if you play hardcore you should know the stats you need for every encounter and prepare. If you go blind into the content you have to be way overleveled. Also expect to reroll a few times. But i agree they could prepare players a little more by making the mobs significantly harder before you face a tough encounter. They do that already but maybe not enough. Also they want players to spend time with the new content i think that is why new encounters are a little harder.
I really enjoy the hard bosses i wouldn't mind if they bring act 1-4 on paar with the rest.

You're probably not playing hardcore if you want content to be more difficult than now. When you're running your third or fourth character in a league and have good items then yes, it's ok. But when you don't know that boss have a skill that can oneshot you if you will miss it, then game probably should say something about it, like "Look out! There's big shot coming at you and you can die!". This game right now is not about it, most of deaths are instant oneshots and I'm not even talking about new content.

When 2.0 was released Piety and Malachai were too overtuned, GGG admitted that and nerfed these bosses after 2-3 weeks. Before 3.0 all leveling content was well balanced, then they released beta for balancing and testing new content but after release we see that it's not balanced at all, we can again see difficulty spike after act 4. Just think about new players and what they're getting after act 4 -- my friend that never played POE before came to act 4 and was surprised about even casual monsters in act 5. When he came to a first boss he got instant oneshot and stopped playing this game.

That's what games are about -- being fun with rewarding player for good moves than punishing players for their mistakes.

Thats interesting but for me games are about a challenge and adapting your strategy if the previous failed. I normaly play hardcore but harbinger mobs are freezing my screen ^^. There are plenty of players who managed to reach maps even players that played the game for the first time. And if you are worried about an encounter just overlevel. You can easily level to 75 before atempting Kitava. And if you are really good do him at 68. Its fun that taking the risk rewards you with faster progression.
If everything fails use a bosskillservice. These died out long ago when they nerfed the game into the ground.

My favourite boss was the one using schorching ray or a beam mechanic.

/s

There's very little variation in bosses and it shows that the attempt of GGG to appease the "I don't want to pay for Dark Souls" crowd is getting nowhere other than player frustration.

They can't get the miracle that is Atziri right again. And frankly, I don't care if they do. But having to spend more time walking and avoiding instead of attacking in a top down ARPG might be a few steps too far from what the genre is supposed to appease.

Even worse than the game is now tailed on never outscaling map bosses. What kind of ARPG does that?

Im kind of shocked only one poster mentioned Ravaged Square with its Spectral Throw mobs. They feel like they are from another difficulty.

I couldn't agree more. I am intensely in love with the lore in this game, but the gameplay elements are about to make me quit after my first 200 hours, and haven't even beaten the game on higher difficulties yet. Enemies deal way too much damage, and bosses insta-kill you. ****ing laser beams of death are retarded stupid. They should do moderate damage. Something that has a large build up, that you can see coming, should take 75% dmg off. Not, "Oh I see an attack coming, I'll try and use my pot-oh nevermind no potions for me I'm dead already." This is ZeroFunTM game mechanics.

I can strongly recommend anyone who thinks act 5-10 is too hard to set a goal for themselves for this league:

Kill Kitava in HC without paying for any boss kills (and try not to cheese the content too much with overgearing / overleveling).

I did it and it's really not that bad. The second you die from your mistakes is the second you start bothering to actually learn the fights.
I struggled a lot against Brine King in softcore and died 5 times or so. He was easy in HC. Because I read up on the fight and started paying attention. Same thing with Kitava.

But I did die on my first playthrough in HC when I tried the 'Gruthkul, Mother of Despair' =(

The content is not too hard at all.

For me i think, the problem with over tuned bosses is replayabiliy. I got to 90+ with my 'good' build, and started an experimental/test build and was so frustrated i just quit playing.

if it stays as is i will likely turn into, run good build each league and then move to a different game