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

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

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

You just need a character to open the portal then you switch character... so you can run it without any limit

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

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

If you go play d2 now, uber diablo is gated way more heavily than anything else because bots don't just feed an endless stream of sojs to vendors :) Unless I happen to build a character in the first week after a reset, I don't even care about trying to score my own annihilus. My times going back to d2 usually end up in month 3 of the ladder or later (and the latter resets are increasingly infrequent), so eventually someone just drops an annihilus on me for charity lol.

"

AsbelFar wrote:

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

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

You just need a character to open the portal then you switch character... so you can run it without any limit

Yes, that's an exploit.
Works, of course. Not very convenient, though.

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

"

AsbelFar wrote:

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

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

You just need a character to open the portal then you switch character... so you can run it without any limit

Yes, that's an exploit.
Works, of course. Not very convenient, though.

Technically speaking the same character could run it repeatedly as long as they didn't kill the king - which could be easy/hard to avoid depending on the character build.

Nah, the king was always in a certain area, all you needed to do was to avoid it.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

"

LowBudget780 wrote:

"

鬼殺し wrote:

On the other hand, who are you to this game? Hell, who are you to this community?

Same could be said for yourself.

Sure, but then there'd be a clear, verifiable answer. So feel free to ask. My ego is certainly large enough that I'd happily answer, but hopefully someone else would beat me to it. :)

Same could be said for yourself.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

...Not much to add to that well-formed contribution other than to say...I really, really fucking wish Grim Dawn had been more like Titan Quest Remastered instead of whatever it is now. I KEEP trying to get into it and something just doesn't click.

"This game is great, but it would really be awesome if..." We say that to ourselves all the time about any "good" game. Gamers do this - They imagine all their favorite things mushed up into a game and then, eventually, lament the fact that they aren't. :) I do it, too.

But, just as you point out, mushing stuff together doesn't always work very well. Sometimes, a game just has to be what it is, no more and no less. For instance, Diablo 3 is a "good game." (/ducks) But, it is what it is - A competitive, Seasonal, ladder-climbing game. Trying to play it as anything else makes it into a fun game to play for a week and then... stop playing. Well, two weeks. Maybe.

"

I'm banking on Wolcen being my next real meaty ARPG experience but until then, it's Titan Quest on android and whatever kooky build ideas I get for PoE until early to mid maps...if it's an unusually good kooky build idea.

And, on to our Gamer's Wishes Rule #2! We're all guilty of it and we all do it:

"That new game that's coming up? Wow, that's going to be the game for me! It's going to do exactly what I want a game to do!"

Aaaand... no. :) My falsely assumed hopes have been dashed far too many times to put my confidence in the "next new best thing evar."

You know what I think the "fix" for gamers is? Admitting to oneself that there is no One Game to Rule Them All. There is no single solution to a gamer's habit. If we want to scratch certain gaming itches, we have to play different games in order to enjoy the games that we do play. This goes a long way towards curing "burnout" problems.

"

I am not here for the repetition that so gripped me during the D1/D2 days. I'm just that much older, less competitive and...older than then. It's a thing I think GGG didn't take into account when they made PoE as something for old D1/D2 players to hold onto from their glory days, to support with their now very mature liquid assets and growed-up big-people paycheques: we got older. We've been kicking around this genre for decades, and while PoE has innovations for days, in the end it's still trying very hard (not) to be D2's obvious successor.

I still don't think all the pieces of PoE fit together that well and there's probably 33.% of 3 extremely fucking good games jumbled together in Wraeclast...and for a first time effort, it's nothing short of a miracle. But if we're being fair, 33.3% of 3 different games mashed together does not a 99.9% game make. It mostly just makes a mess.

G3's most innovative addition is the new content every quarter. THAT is what makes the game what it is. That is what drives all these youtubers and builds and new stuffs and... "newness." And, when the content sucks or doesn't really do anything "new?" <cough>Bestiary<cough> Then what? Our itch for that favorite something maybe being possible or that desire to experience something that is fun and new doesn't get scratched because we're all depending on just one game to do it.

Granted, PoE isn't really for "casuals." Sure, a casual player could probably have a great time for a very long time playing PoE. Take everything slow, enjoy the scenery, try new builds before even finishing the one they have, etc.. But, the game is not now designed for that. It's designed...

"This quarter, experience the most awesomest thing EVAR! More awesome than "Awesome League 4" and more betterer than "Bestest League NAOW!" It's "WTFROFL LEAGUE! See monsters with new skins and color effects! LOOK AT ALL THE PARTICLES! Five new piece of Unique Gear that nobody can figure out what they're good for! Fifty-eleven new MTX's for you to spend your money on! Five-bajillion new shards and drops and crafting mats requiring you to forcibly remove your next-door neighbor from their own house in order to make room for the new Stash Pages you'll need! That's right - WTFROFL LEAGUE! It's what you've been waiting for! And, you've got 90 days to finish it or you suck! So, Git Gud, scrub!"

I'm sure "Standard" is "where it's at," right? :) PoE is now a base game that changes every 90 days. It's sure to include new stuff for you to cram into your Stash. It's going to have some kind of "new thing" in it, just to scratch part of the itch they know all gamers have.

But, honestly, I don't think anyone cares if a League goes into "Standard" or not. Because... That's "Standard" and who in the heck wants to sit in Standard staring at their hideout with nothing left to do... :)

Poe is a 90day game that changes slightly every quarter. It's still a great game. I firmly believe that. But, if we want to scratch all our gamer itches, no one game is going to do it. We may as well accept PoE for what it is.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Hey, I might express some excitement over things but I'm not the sort to say 'best thing evar' or 'this is it' without a loooot of research and engagement. Easy on the false attribution of hype-tendencies there, friend.

Those were just generalized expressions of dialogue, equivalent of using the "Editorial You" as a way to provide a humorous example. They were not attributed to you at all. They are a reflection of some humorous halfway point that everyone falls within, but nobody seems to admit to. :) There was no attribution to you insinuated at all.

"

I've put a good 150 hours into the Wolcen alpha, so I think my investment in the beta is warranted. OTOH I put close to that into the Diablo 3 beta and look where I ended up. So it's not as if I'm not also fully prepared for another disappointment...prepared but not actively expecting. I find pre-emptive jadedness and cynicism just as self-sabotaging as overindulgence in salivating anticipation. I did mention I'm sort of old, right? All this time, all these games...all these everythings (there's never been a better time to be a cashed-up nerd!)...all lessons in learning to temper expectations.

I've beta'd my fair share, too. And, I'm probably older than you. :)

But, none of that matters, really, aside from some anecdotal testimonials, one old gaming fart to another. ;)

"

And I think it's okay to bank on a particular upcoming game scratching a certain itch -- it's not as if I only play ARPGs! I expect that's something that does need to be clarified here. As you said, PoE isn't a game for casuals, so if you're here, there's a solid chance this is indeed all you play, regardless of genre. Which, frankly, sounds horrifying to me.

I don't take gaming that seriously. Sure, I love gaming. I'm a huge fan of gaming. I've been a gamer all my life. But, I've learned that not every game can be all things, even if it's everything expected of a genre.

The really good games and the really great games do a few things extremely well. For those "Big Ticket Items" in the things that their fans really want, they serve up a great score and the fans are pleased enough to call them a good or great game. But, even those games have their shortcomings and often end up just not doing something that people say should be done. Every single one eventually gets identified as having some sort of "fatal flaw." Why? Even if you eat the World's Best Pie every day, one day it's just going to end up being "just another piece of pie."

"...there's a solid chance this is indeed all you play..."

Dude.

You mistakenly assumed I was making some sort of criticism of you in the fake dialogue attributes I posted, which were entirely meant to be humorous, shared, memes and now you're jumping on my back, making dumb assumptions? You forget yourself, sir.

I'm retired.

I can play whatever the heck games I want, as long as I want, whenever I want. :) I'm currently killing every colonist in Rimworld and am getting ready to build a new rig so I can play "X4" when it comes out next month.

I play PoE because a good friend of mine plays it. We, as well as others, play console games together because we live in a different parts of the country, now. It's an easy way for us to stay in touch and nobody has to worry about updating their rigs. We were playing D3 and pushing ladders earlier this year and switched to PoE when it came to console. And, we had all been there on Day 1 of D3, too, since we were all original-release D1 and D2 players, we felt we owed it to our gaming souls...

I've beta'd more games, killed more bosses, raided more lairs, slain more beasts, and can out-kill, out-run, out-fight, out-spit, out-drink any darn gamer in the land! :) (That's a joke, btw.)

I am largely in agreement with you. But, my own experience, which is ancient, tells me that what I've written is largely true. No matter how much we hype our own expectations for ourselves, they're largely just "wishes" without a clear means of implementation and they put far too much on the Genie that is "the game."

So what if Uber Diablo or cowking were gated?

And I did 100000 cow runs, with a PARTY.

Bring me back something like Voll or something. Dunno so I could farm it a bit and call it a day.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

"

Mikrotherion wrote:

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

As others have noted, Therion, there were ways around that...but again, this is gating of either super high end stuff *or* novelty weird stuff, which is fine. You could still do Hell/Hell or Hell/Throne and be perfectly okay with that. I suppose you could then argue that you could do Act 10 over and again but I think we both know it's not quite the same thing. Or maybe it is and we just couldn't conceive of gated randomised end-game content as *the* default end-game back in the D2 days.

I'm not disagreeing.
Just wanted to throw in those two as an example that not everything was free to do as much as you liked in D2.
Of course PoE has layers of gating compared to which D2 pales.