Looking back at D2, why every boss that is worth doing is gated?

This is what happens when they have to compromise game play to preserve the precious economy. "Everything" worth doing, needs a cost/investment.

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Nubatron wrote:

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FrodoFraggins wrote:

In general I think it's better to get rid of endless/mindless boss runs and make killing trash either required or much more rewarding than it was in D2. I'll take POE's system over D2's any day.

They are not mutually exclusive though. If I had to pick, sure POE. But it's a false dilemma.

As others have said - if you make boss farming quick like D2 you also drastically nerf the drops from those bosses. Thus they are much less rewarding anyway.

This game is designed around currency farming and trading them for upgrades

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Nubatron wrote:

I do miss boss runs. It's hard to describe why. Maybe it was the mindless nature of it. The constant pulling of the lever on the slot machine. Maybe even the ability to party up in public groups with little risk of losing anything...

^--- This. All of those things could make the somewhat mindless bossruns entertaining. And, there was always ATMA's for softcore/sp players for loot collections. :) Getting together with some friends for an afternoon of bossruns could actually be fun. But, endlessly doing bossruns for that one Rune you just can't seem to get to drop... unfun.

"

...This wouldn't just open up boss runs (Dominus, Piety, Voll, etc.), but it would also open up old ledge runs, dried lake runs, aquaduct runs, etc. as well. It would even open up divination card farming.

That would take focus away from the end game, which isn't a priority I think....also a mistake. Let players define their end game a bit more (this is not an invitation to make it rain loot) and then you'll see more player retention.

I agree, but perhaps not on the exact mechanics. I think the overall idea you're suggesting is "Expand our content by giving us a reason to explore/experience the "Campaign" game, pre-Atlas."

I'm all for that! And, I think GGG would be, too. They've already created it. It's sitting there. It never gets used after the player moves into the Atlas and League content. The only reason we ever have for going back there is to clear out crappy Prophecies.

So, building upon what's already there, making something "special" happen to that content in the late game that gives us a reason for going back to it, is a good idea. Just so long as we don't have to slog act-to-act yet again, that is. :)

When I left D2 years ago, all I was really doing was solo ubers because I could no longer farm bosses repeatedly for junk rewards that I'd often mule for no reason.

PoE is basically a natural evolution of that. You can't farm a handful of bosses repeatedly and keep that game fresh for long. With the addition of currency, one can build up currency and trade in a system far more efficient than the D2 days.

If you look at a lot of what gates certain bosses in PoE, I'd say its relatively balanced when you consider how well a player has to perform to accomplish the goal.

When I first started doing regular atziri, I struggled. She's since become a baseline for me. My first elder fights made me realize just how much I needed to improve my damage output.

I still haven't done shaper because I have an issue with buying maps/fragments that aren't dirt cheap. Can I afford it? Yep. Can I complete the fight? Prolly.

The last time I got a rush was using a chayula stone for the first time -- had never before and have not since spent that much for one fight. But considering how strong my character had to be, its understandable that not everyone could complete that same content.

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Morkonan wrote:

3) Generic Minibosses/mapbosses still have a bonus to their drop tables (Map drop bonus), making them desirable targets.

Say what? Do you even PoE? This is just completely wrong.

Edit Almost as wrong as the horrible quoting I did. Fixed

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

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Morkonan wrote:

3) Generic Minibosses/mapbosses still have a bonus to their drop tables (Map drop bonus), making them desirable targets.

Say what? Do you even PoE? This is just completely wrong.

Edit Almost as wrong as the horrible quoting I did. Fixed

"Completely wrong?"

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Map

"

.... Magic and rare monsters can drop maps that are +1 tier above and map bosses can drop +2 tiers above the map area the character is in respectively. ...

Is that wrong? If so, you should go edit the Wiki to reflect that.

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鬼殺し wrote:

This is a carryover mentality that GGG have had pretty much from the start.

Stop sprouting non-sense (again).

This is a business, decisions are based on actual research perform mostly by phD students on specific fields.

In this case, it's a F2P. Like all F2P it hooks you up by starting easy then it literally shits on your progress stopping it into oblivion. The objective is to ensure the "TARGET PAYING AUDIENCE" (so not you specifically) spends as long as possible in front of the screen, "hoping" to succeed.

More time means more chance to trigger compulsive buyer behavior which translates into $$$.

It's not a "mentality", it's a 100% focus on business. It doesn't even matter if the game feels shit as long as it feels shit for the ones not paying (or not paying too much). The ones that are supposed to be happy are those peeps with gambling personalities and the like, because they're the ones generating revenue.

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Mischief67 wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

This is a carryover mentality that GGG have had pretty much from the start.

Stop sprouting non-sense (again).

This is a business, decisions are based on actual research perform mostly by phD students on specific fields.

In this case, it's a F2P. Like all F2P it hooks you up by starting easy then it literally shits on your progress stopping it into oblivion. The objective is to ensure the "TARGET PAYING AUDIENCE" (so not you specifically) spends as long as possible in front of the screen, "hoping" to succeed.

More time means more chance to trigger compulsive buyer behavior which translates into $$$.

It's not a "mentality", it's a 100% focus on business. It doesn't even matter if the game feels shit as long as it feels shit for the ones not paying (or not paying too much). The ones that are supposed to be happy are those peeps with gambling personalities and the like, because they're the ones generating revenue.

Sprouting? Or Spouting? Either way its not nonsense.

Somebody completely misinterpreted the context.

For us D2 players, we see it because we spent so many hours mindlessly boss running, and it makes sense that they would want to get away from the boss farming mentality. It's strange how I can still picture teleporting around just to kill hell meph in a few seconds just to start a new game and repeat over and over until I was so sick of it I moved onto a different boss. You didn't bother farming waves because regular mobs base drop chance was incredibly low as it was, where as in PoE the chance of a regular monster to drop something starts in double digits.

I get you want to write it off as F2p and following the money - but for those of us who truly got the D2 experience, it's not surprising in why PoE has developed the way it did.

D2 seasons could go beyond a year, and the mess of the economy showed. In Poe a league can't even go two months without seeing a typical drop off.

When you look at a bigger picture, you realize that the game has to survive to make a profit, and to do so things must be done to keep players interested.

Just the other day I saw that Wildstar is shutting down. While it was a neat game, it was a philosophy that killed it. I heard about PoE years before I ever played it. Somehow despite its repetitive nature, its still going strong.

TLDR at the bottom:

Nobody solves the "Player Retention" issue. Nobody. It has never happened. The best anyone can hope to do to retain peak subscriptions, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, is about three years. And, to be honest, that's stretching it pretty darn far. That's not, by the way, "original accounts." That's just an acceptable subscription base derived from peak players.

Games that have stood the test of time... Well, we all know them because we probably still play them, from time to time. But, that's "from time to time." This is the first PC I've had without D2 on it... (Well, nothing's on this PC, really.)

A long-running game needs new subscribers, not necessarily "retention." Retention is great and with the new "Software as a Service" model everyone is lapping up, it's a goal to maintain original "whale" subscribers/customers. But, even whales can't support a game, entirely. (For those who need to know, a "Whale" is a particularly large spender of perks, in-game items, etc, that extends far beyond normal player's expenditures.)

PoE is a F3P model designed to quickly grab and entertain players as well as getting them "invested" in the game through Stash Tab purchases. (That thing everyone says you don't need, but that everyone seems to end up buying. :) ) But, to keep players and to generate interest and word-of-mouth subscribers, PoE does something else, too - It's a darn good game.

PoE is a good game. And, everyone says so, too. Well, at least the reviewers that really matter.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/path-of-exile

/bam
/micdrop

That's 86% for "Reviewers" whoever the heck they are and an 8 out of 10 user score. That's for a long-running game that's five years old. And, it's FREE? And, it's NOT Pay to Win? AND it has new content added four times a year with a variety of play modes?

But, even though it's a great game with continuing, meaningful, content additions, it still has the same problem as every other game - It gets old. It retains a loyal playerbase and still gets new players. But, the lack of published numbers, which is a smart thing, means we really don't know. A lack of clear income figures, which I haven't bothered looking up/hunting down, tells us even less.

IMO, the game is fine as far as difficulty is concerned at high tiers. The issue is only magnified by the fact we have a limited time to achieve those tiers. OK, it just means "work smarter and harder."

For GGG/Tencent, to revitalize numbers, perhaps drawing in some old subscribers who would be quicker to buy pricey "Supporter Packs" (lol... love the psychology of that) would be to publish a new, real, full "Expansion." Not a League, but a new continent, new storylne, etc. AND invest some cash in marketing it, too. (Nobody can buy into what they can't know about or see.)

TLDR: The game is great. It's got a standard end-game difficulty curve. Our time to achieve true end-game is limited, making it even more difficult during League. And, it's a credit to the game's design that it has lasted this long. End of line.

It's gated because too much of anything is always bad.If it wasnt gated people would cry that the drops are bad.If they made the drops better people would be crying because nothing has value because the simple fact is that wealth is only relative.If most people only have a few hundred dollars then the people with millions are rich.If everyone has a million dollars nobody is rich.