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

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鬼殺し wrote:

... As a knee-jerk reaction, GGG went too far in gating content and denying boss runs, because like us the founders of GGG spent their time zipping around the Durance or the Throne only to wipe out Mephy or Baal over and over. They didn't want that in their game, and I don't blame them. But you can't change core player behaviour for an established genre just by restricting one way of doing it. Inevitably, people found ways of being mindlessly repetitive here too. ...

D2 bossruns and their mindlessness was THE topic of convesation for late-game play. That and people selling broken/duped/"corrupted" items on Ebay. :)

But, as you infer, there's only so many ways to play an ARPG like this. We expect "Episodic Play." We expect zones that get progressively harder, mini-bosses, zone/act bosses, "named" rare mobs, and loot, loot, loot... Oh, and flexible builds so everyone isn't fighting for gear for their Hammerdin.

In an MMO, which this isn't, a good bit of the game's actual content is "player driven." All those interactions, groups one joins, stuff one buys from others, corpse-run help, leveling help, arguing about Chuck Norris <-- All player driven and "value added" content. That's one of the appeals of such games, really. For a D3-wannabe, the game can't be like that, so it's an episodic atory-driven game with very basic multiplayer, just like D1+D2 in that respect.

What content would one or three players take on in such a game? Well, you can't lock out content to only certain sorts of multiplayer. Every MMO has learned that, more or less. Scaled down, that means you can't lock out content from single-players. And, combining those goals, yup - Zone bosses, Act bosses, rare mobs, etc.. and loot 'splosions just like every other player gets to experience. No "Purples," but a plethora of "Uniques." No Sets one has to complete with the really good pieces hidden behind group-only mobs, either.

PoE has managed to do more than just make their version of a "D3." They've made a better version of a single-player friendly, mulitplayer optional, ARPG than anyone else. At least, for its style of play, that is. Diablo 3 right now is all about the "Ladder." Nobody cares about anything else if they're pushing the end-game, since that is the end-game. For PoE, there's a huge assortment of end-game activities, special Maps, pieces to collect to get access to special bosses, a "Progression" scheme, a "Final Boss" so-to-speak, and a storyline, too.

In short, to stay with the original idea of a real successor to D3, I think they did a great job and probably made the idea they may have had to start with much better.

But, at the end of the day, unless someone comes up with "the next new thing" in ARPG, this is the sort of gameplay format that isometric ARPG games take. It's part-and-parcel to the genre. For now...

One day, we'll have the systems and networks to support "something bigger." It'll happen, since there's money in it and people really want it. When that happens, it may change the face of the standard ARPG. Until then, Diablo'ish clones and their gameplay format as well as PoE's ideas expanding on more complex end-game play are what we are going to get.

Most ARPG fans are perfectly happy with that. Though, nobody can ever stop time and prevent anything from eventually just getting old.

I feel like the original reason for gating boss was because of Pindlebot, but there are so many more sophisticated bots running now that it's a useless design philosophy.

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ExcretusMaximus wrote:

I feel like the original reason for gating boss was because of Pindlebot, but there are so many more sophisticated bots running now that it's a useless design philosophy.

That's pretty insightful. D2 degenerated into people multi botting pindle.

Can you imagine if poe bots just formed voll for sweet loot all day?

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鬼殺し wrote:

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

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 think this is a rare have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation, honestly. As a knee-jerk reaction, GGG went too far in gating content and denying boss runs, because like us the founders of GGG spent their time zipping around the Durance or the Throne only to wipe out Mephy or Baal over and over. They didn't want that in their game, and I don't blame them. But you can't change core player behaviour for an established genre just by restricting one way of doing it. Inevitably, people found ways of being mindlessly repetitive here too.

So a gentle un-gating of middle upper content could work. I'm talking low to mid map tiers, as opposed to real Uber stuff, which I agree should be gated since it's the pinnacle of things. Now that the game leads you straight into mapping from act 10 (as opposed to seeming truly 'optional' as it did before 3.0) it seems a little cruel to keep it all dictated by RNG. And I think some deterministic boss runs wouldn't be the end of Wraeclast -- Atziri herself was close to that, given for a while killing her was the only way to get certain uniques, but the lead-up to her is still a Map with its portal restrictions. That's not really a boss run.

As I said before, it doesn't really matter; the end-game Map system is all but set in stone as craftable, tradeable, and/or RNG-dictated. Fun to discuss a world where that's not the case...I suppose.

Yeah, when I first started I expected to gear up by farming early bosses - only to find that was very ineffective. Granted, when I first started I also wasted waaaay too much time shopping at the vendors.

There's definitely too much in between to consider Atziri just a boss run. (I'm still made I never got her incursion room) And mapping is definitely a better alternative to just running the same handful of areas.

But yes, something a little less rng based would be nice, like a map vendor with restricted inventory that unlocks maps as you complete previous tiers. Of course said vendor could not overcharge too much or it would basically just be a boon for the ssf if any at all.

‘Desirable targets’

Don’t be obtuse. Anyone who has played the game for any length of time knows that killing bosses has such a fraction of a chance for anything extra that it is not worth the time let alone the extra risk.

I’m not denying the ‘extra’ chance design.

Edit - oops failed to quote so this is just floating out there apropo to nothing. Oh well.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

‘Desirable targets’

Don’t be obtuse. Anyone who has played the game for any length of time knows that killing bosses has such a fraction of a chance for anything extra that it is not worth the time let alone the extra risk.

I’m not denying the ‘extra’ chance design.

Edit - oops failed to quote so this is just floating out there apropo to nothing. Oh well.

The bosses do drop more items and some are boss specific. However, unlike in D2 where drop chance was so low you were steered towards boss farming - Poe has become the inverse where the bosses drop plenty but its so likely to be crap anyway that its often not worth the added risk or time investment.

First, i'd like to talk about a different game. Poe of the first 2-3 leagues after 1.0.
I play since open beta, though my "resume" wouldn't give that away. As some people in this forum tend to go to other people's account and count "achievements" as the qualifying parameter for speaking in this community.

I remember there were 3X3 acts. I remember Piety as the final boss and how people made runs together. I almost never played alone. People ran docks, the ledge and fellshrine to get EXP. Then dominus became the last boss and people farmed it.

I could actually do end-game content, with 8 people party (I think it was 8), with the same computer! which today only doing dailies almost fry my GPU.

I never dropped a shav (got only 1 from div cards), never dropped a kaom's heart. Dropped once soultaker, way after the nerf. I don't cry, I find between 4-7 ex per league and usually can make one or two decent chars. As I learn to play 'better'.

Normal Atziri was very hard when it was introduced (not talking about uber), but she was reasonably gated. It wasn't too hard or time consuming to gain access to her.

Today? this is crazy. I hit 30 and I don't have time to grind that much in order to progress. I want a decent way to farm something that is considered 'end game' which is not yellow-low red maps. I want an option that I can do 10 times and feel like I did something and go to sleep.

Giving access to 'uber' final act bosses should be easy and rewarding to some extent. Not talking about special uniques. Not talking about elder, or shaper. Just something like act 4 hell voll.

To run 100000 BC maps is also not a good option because again, RNG gate that.


If you dismiss that because of the fear that people will exploit it, well, news flash, people exploit this game already.

First of all, if they 'fear' of people running the same instance over and over again, why did they give the option to reset the instance? So they made unique monsters close to exists to drop literally nothing. And they removed special 'uber' chests from the catacombs and the crypt, as if they had a change of mind, but I don't know why exactly.

Second, people will always find an exploit. As atziri was introduced, people used fucking metronomes to predict if a corrupted zone was spawned or not. No developer in his wild dreams could see that coming.

Third, meta builds can be considered an exploitation by the same standards you people raise here. That is why people say 'it's a broken build', because they find a way to use a skill, or an item way better than the devs could imagine.

The answer is not to gate things and make it harder to gain access, because in the end currency drops everywhere regardless of level and zone. So a stupid bot can run ledge for 24\7 and find decent amounts of currency. then what? let's just make all monsters drop wisdom scrolls, and let uber uber eldashaper to drop something (with extreme variants).

Looking back at D2:

The only thing that made the non-gated boss "worth it" was killing it over and over a million times to get the rune/unique item drop. So what happened? Bots.. Bots would farm those non-gated encounters over and over 24/7.

No thanks

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Ghai wrote:

The answer is not to gate things and make it harder to gain access, because in the end currency drops everywhere regardless of level and zone. So a stupid bot can run ledge for 24\7 and find decent amounts of currency. then what? let's just make all monsters drop wisdom scrolls, and let uber uber eldashaper to drop something (with extreme variants).

That says a lot - I was still playing CS 1.6 when you started and didn't start myself till abyss.

Currency can drop anywhere, but level dictates what can drop, sextants for example.

There's also a currency drop penalty when you exceed the area level by a certain threshold - which effectively discontinues at map level.

The reality is if you can't afford the fight you're almost guaranteed to not be able to succeed it in. The people who can complete the end game fights with sub par gear are actually able to afford it - whereas the typical player can struggle with an ACT Kitava.

Chayula fight is expensive - the shards are rare and you need something capable if you're even going to make it to the boss fight. Random builds will fail and there goes over an exalt of value wasted. Players who cannot complete that fight consistently cannot afford to take big losses like that.

So "gating" certain fights by costs prevents people from getting into fights they'd have no means of finishing. I've made progress over the last few leagues as I gained experience. At this point it's my unwillingness to spend significant amounts on maps that impedes my progress, but that's my own personal choice not the fault of game design.

Uber Diablo was gated.
Cow King was gated - heavily. You could actually only do him once per character.