Boss design - have you guys reached a creative dead end?

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Mikrotherion wrote:

The other question is, should casuals be able to do all content?

This is the question for the ages.

My take? No. It's totally OK to have content aimed at every type of player. In my mind, and endgame is supposed to be this loop, becoming more and more challenging, making only somewhat "dedicated" players remain. Casual players have standard, where they can spend a long time practicing the fights.

Is that an elitist take? Maybe, maybe not. It is coming from a fairly casual+ player.

A 10 second logout delay would help a lot to balance the game. Then the devs could cut back some of the instant kill stuff

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Phrazz wrote:

GGG have funneled themselves into bullet-hell boss design. I fear there's no way out of it, unless they greatly reduce player speed and recovery in PoE2.

I hope we don't get any of these bullet-hell bosses in the second campaign. Their boss design of the early days was much better (Brutus, Merveil, Vaal Oversoul, Piety, Dominus). They started putting players in cramped arenas since Malachai. Although I did like Conqueror bosses except for Drox with overbuffed life.

I was actually surprised to see how easy the searing exarch is. I had no clue what he does and I killed him without dying. His balls were actually pretty fun.

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Reinhart wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

GGG have funneled themselves into bullet-hell boss design. I fear there's no way out of it, unless they greatly reduce player speed and recovery in PoE2.

I hope we don't get any of these bullet-hell bosses in the second campaign. Their boss design of the early days was much better (Brutus, Merveil, Vaal Oversoul, Piety, Dominus). They started putting players in cramped arenas since Malachai. Although I did like Conqueror bosses except for Drox with overbuffed life.

The early bosses were good because of the slow pace of early PoE.
Fighting Brutus with no movement speed and no spammable movement skills, had an almost Butcher-like sense of dread.
The atmosphere was similar to survival horror.
Piety had an entire game story worth of build-up (more than Dominus) and her ice form had you mouse-running for the nearest pillar instead of instantly teleporting to it, or just outright killing her in 2 seconds before she can even switch forms.
Dominus' champions were a serious threat rather than generic add phase cannon fodder.

The speed-creep and power-creep of the game changed boss design from epic battle to "zoom zoom DPS".
And even then, Shaper was a fun boss originally. The story build-up. The guardians. The epic arena. Everything had the feeling like you are literally about to face the God of the end-game in an epic confrontation.
I did complain a lot about his bullet hell attacks but in hindsight he is a very well-designed and fun "final boss".

Now it feels like GGG are just copy-pasting generic bosses with one-shot mechanics, invisible debuffs, and cluttered arenas where you can't see shit (based on the Malachai red-on-red model).
And the story doesn't matter anymore because the racers and streamers don't give a fuck anyways.
"Eater of worlds" is just one more generic eldritch-space-astronaut-thing to zoom through.
Heck, he doesn't even have a Dominus-esque or Shaper-esque dialogue when defeated, or explode like Katarina. Because GGG know the racers stop the clock at that point anyways, so why bother?
Next patch there will be two of them at the same time (yes I fucking hate the Uber Elder fight and Maven's invitations).

the first time you fight these 4 bosses theyre pretty easy. i did all 4 blind and deathless on a juggernaut melee marauder, and im not rly a bosser type player.

i thought the 2 big bosses had bigger arenas, less area denial, less visual clusterfuckness than most of their big boss designs.

They tried a new tactic with maven, but putting puzzles in with too many other competing attention sinks is probably bad

They are big fans of players having to manage moving/homing death traps so idk if that will ever not be a part of any future boss fights. But introducing puzzles is a start...I mean, the fights COULD be mostly puzzles and penalties for failing increasingly difficult ones, but I think most average PoE players don't have the patience for that sort of thing, if Lab is any indication.

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crunkatog wrote:

They tried a new tactic with maven, but putting puzzles in with too many other competing attention sinks is probably bad

They are big fans of players having to manage moving/homing death traps so idk if that will ever not be a part of any future boss fights. But introducing puzzles is a start...I mean, the fights COULD be mostly puzzles and penalties for failing increasingly difficult ones, but I think most average PoE players don't have the patience for that sort of thing, if Lab is any indication.

I'm ok with puzzles. Actually like the Lab traps as a concept.
But not inside the boss arena.
In a boss fight you are supposed to be focused on what the boss is doing.
Uber Elder first messed that up by having to focus on 2 bosses at the same time, Maven's invitations on X bosses at the same time, and the Maven fight 3rd phase had you do a memory game while dodging spinning lasers and debuffs which is utter BS.

Periods of invincibility while still doing damage is irritating to me as is off screen death rays and finally puzzles or memory games when supposed to be killing monsters are all irritating mechanics that are sometimes used.

Traps are not puzzles. Figuring out how to abuse the league mechanic is more of a puzzle than traps.