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

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Phrazz wrote:

I have now experienced (and finished) all four fights in league, and I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised. I think they all provide a healthy balance between gear-checks, telegraphed heavy attacks/spells and phases. The two things I like the most, are the sound queues and the boss "uptime", where you actually feel that you're fighting the boss, and not avoiding/chasing it constantly (read: Sirus).

And how do you feel about the loot? I haven't played obviously, but what I've read seems to indicate the risk vs reward is dramatically out of whack.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

And how do you feel about the loot? I haven't played obviously, but what I've read seems to indicate the risk vs reward is dramatically out of whack.

Well, the fights are fairly easy, WAY easier than Maven or Sirus. So my assumption is that their rewards are balanced around scaling/rolling the encounters. Great for bad players like myself, as I'm not locked out from beating them and can progress - and not locked out from the real reward, which is 28 fantastic influenced maps before I 'have to' beat them again.

I did, however, drop a boss unique from both of my fights. I got the ammy from The Eater and the shield from The Exarch. But the jewels? And some of the other crazy uniques? Well, they might be well guarded by RNG for all I know.

people expected many of the new uniques they drop to be worth a mirror on standard because theyre super powerful, then within about an hour of the server going up multiple of all of them were being posted in global chat and they were all being listed for a few exalts each at most because theyre all obviously so common and easy to get.

i dont rly understand anyone complaining about risk vs reward, whats the complaint exactly? theres virtually no risk and the rewards are extremely powerful potentially build defining uniques being quite common. is the complaint that theres no risk for too much reward? if thats what theyre suggesting might be a fair take.

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Phrazz wrote:

The problem is, has always been and will always be player recovery.

GGG have chosen their path; they want a fast paced, snappy, reaction-based ARPG. And when you couple that with immense speed and recovery from flasks, leech and regeneration, the only dangers left, are the ones that kill you more or less instantly.

We actually had a discussion about this in my guild the other day, when someone was wondering why he experiences the mechanical design of act bosses as much better than endgame bosses. The answer here, is that your speed and recovery through the acts, aren't that great, and bosses can be a little bit less... "One-shotty".

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 really don't think that's the case. You can't endlessly flask through boss damage late game and the really crazy recovery builds are generally pretty expensive and should realistically be able to tank anything (and they can regardless). Changing recovery mechanics wont accomplish anything because it all boils down to the log out macro. GGG designs content to instantly destroy players when they make mistakes because otherwise nobody in HC would ever die. Players have to die faster than they can hit their logout macro, that is what controls the balance of the game.

Nothing will change until a logout timer is added, and that will never happen because the game has gathered such a large crowd of "fake" hardcore players. I mean you have players like Zizaran sponsoring half the leagues and when challenged to play one league without a logout macro he died like 20 times and whined the entire time about how he would panic flail and die every time he got a bleed or MoM drained.

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Astasia wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

The problem is, has always been and will always be player recovery.

GGG have chosen their path; they want a fast paced, snappy, reaction-based ARPG. And when you couple that with immense speed and recovery from flasks, leech and regeneration, the only dangers left, are the ones that kill you more or less instantly.

We actually had a discussion about this in my guild the other day, when someone was wondering why he experiences the mechanical design of act bosses as much better than endgame bosses. The answer here, is that your speed and recovery through the acts, aren't that great, and bosses can be a little bit less... "One-shotty".

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 really don't think that's the case. You can't endlessly flask through boss damage late game and the really crazy recovery builds are generally pretty expensive and should realistically be able to tank anything (and they can regardless). Changing recovery mechanics wont accomplish anything because it all boils down to the log out macro. GGG designs content to instantly destroy players when they make mistakes because otherwise nobody in HC would ever die. Players have to die faster than they can hit their logout macro, that is what controls the balance of the game.

Nothing will change until a logout timer is added, and that will never happen because the game has gathered such a large crowd of "fake" hardcore players. I mean you have players like Zizaran sponsoring half the leagues and when challenged to play one league without a logout macro he died like 20 times and whined the entire time about how he would panic flail and die every time he got a bleed or MoM drained.

The logout macro and HC in general is largely irrelevant to game's balance. Player recovery is a far more universal issue, and I'd agree with Phrazz that it's the more likely reason why the game's design is such, certainly more so than the logout macro.

You can see this in pretty much any bossfight video - just count how many seconds the player spends at low/half life rather than full life, compared to the length of the fight itself. We're almost never in danger of being killed cos our life is currently low, cos as soon as it takes a chunk, it shoots right back up the next second. Hence bosses need to be able to kill us even when we're at full life, because we're almost never in any other state.

How builds accomplish this varies, and it's not always expensive. But it is commonplace, indeed standard. You can check as various bossfight videos as you'd like, featuring as many different builds as you like - you'll find that they all spend very little time at low life. Be it through flasks or leech or life on hit or regen or recoup or recharge or whatever else, it's mostly full life, or dead.

Contrast this with Grim Dawn. Here's a random boss fight video I found - https://youtu.be/FcYwN8FOTZE?t=155

Notice how slowly his life recovers, and how often he dies because/when his life was low when he took the hit? That's an illustration of the alternative.

i think both play a part.


i remember watching vids of ziz dying when he was doing the no logout thing, there were times he was dying to stuff like bleeds and poisons while he still had life flasks he could have used but didnt because hes so used to just logging out rather than continuing to play the game.

95% of the time when hc players die its "i should have logged out there", thats the take away from almost every death. its pathetic tbh, im not knocking the players theyre playing the game as presented to them, the game is pathetic.


and i do think its a factor. recovery is also a factor. but i think its a vicious cycle where theyve always had to kill players before they can log out, so damage has always been like this to some extent, and that in turn means recovery has to be tuned to be effective in a game where the time to death 100% to 0% life tuning needs to be so fast it happens before someone can log out.

if you vastly reduce recovery you then have to vastly reduce the time it takes to die from 100% life and then hardcore becomes a complete joke, its a literal idiotic farce that doesnt even function because you can always log out in time. i think log outs are the chicken that laid the recovery egg, they set the initial conditions in which recovery has had to be tuned this way, and that in turn has dictated all monster design ever since. now the entire thing is locked in this triangle of balance where if you touch any corner you have to redesign the entire thing.

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Exile009 wrote:

Contrast this with Grim Dawn. Here's a random boss fight video I found - https://youtu.be/FcYwN8FOTZE?t=155

Notice how slowly his life recovers, and how often he dies because/when his life was low when he took the hit? That's an illustration of the alternative.

No that's just a summoner build with essentially no recovery. The speed they are regenerating life in that video is the passive regeneration every character gets when they stop taking hits for a few seconds and a couple generic health potions used. Tanky characters in Grim Dawn generally use reactive recovery effects and stack a few of them, when their health gets low they get an instant burst of like 40-60% health on a like 15-30 second cooldown. Life leech is usually more effective though. In either case it's pretty easy to make an immortal character that can face tank any boss if you want to. Defense is balanced against offense in Grim Dawn, you can make an immortal character but it generally wont kill things very fast, or you can make a glass cannon like is seen in that video to kill things quicker but have to run around in boss fights a lot avoiding damage and slowly regenerating health.

Oh they've hit a design deadend and it shows.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

now the entire thing is locked in this triangle of balance where if you touch any corner you have to redesign the entire thing.

Or accept that it'll be easy for the 100 of us that play HC, of which 50 don't logout anyway.

It would be a very major undertaking to change the damage pacing I just don't think they will do it because they don't want to, its a spikey game by design not just because we can quit when we want but also because they give you 6 lives to do fights in SC as well.

Would it be better after? I think its pretty debateable and for me i'd want some skill versatility back in long before they address the damage pacing 3.15 was a real reduction in build potential to try and slow down players that are still going fast as shit.

Honestly if they really want to shake it up they'd make the bosses shaper level of difficulty but only give us one portal

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

I have now experienced (and finished) all four fights in league, and I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised. I think they all provide a healthy balance between gear-checks, telegraphed heavy attacks/spells and phases. The two things I like the most, are the sound queues and the boss "uptime", where you actually feel that you're fighting the boss, and not avoiding/chasing it constantly (read: Sirus).

And how do you feel about the loot? I haven't played obviously, but what I've read seems to indicate the risk vs reward is dramatically out of whack.

you have a chance to drop jewels that can be really strong and the fights are pretty easy especially the eater of worlds fight since it doesn't have a bulshit bullet hell phase but it ha annoying blobs that fuck low range builds most of all