Archnemesis killed the game

As a casual player, I don't really care about the harvest nerfs, I don't juice maps so drop rate changes aren't affecting me much, and the divine/exalt changes are really weird to wrap my head around but not critically bad, but AN mobs are stopping me in my tracks and rendering the entire game un-fun. It's hard to earn currency to create better builds when you get consistently wiped in most level-appropriate heists, or when you sit there having to slog your way through packs of high damage HP sponges everywhere you go in maps. Just scaling the AN mobs way back (or taking them out entirely/making them optional enemy content) would help make the game much more fun.

My favourite are running out of a Heist during lockdown and getting 3-4 Magma Barrier mobs with Orbs chasing you. It’s almost impossible to stop and interact with the door so your rogue can start unlocking it as you are running for your death.

+1

Dying is part of the game, why is everyone so upset?

I liked archnem league, though mainly for the atlas rework.

But by its very design it made no sense to take those mods and throw em on every magic and rare, and for whatever reason they decided to do it anyway.

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AbilityPoints wrote:

Dying is part of the game, why is everyone so upset?

Death = punishment for a mistake. Not, I lost the RNG rolls, time to die.

There's a few effects that could keep that work decently.

The way it's RNG number of effects and each is an RNG type of effect is just dumb.

There's also way too many On-Death effects. On-Death should be purged. There's too much on the screen and I still have no clue where / how the purple splashes of death are working.

This is the first time I've been exposed to AN. Last played Scourge.
Many of the effects are just not communicated well to the player visually or audibly and this is coming from someone who was fine with fully unlocked atlas A8, 100% Delirious, Influence, Ultimatums.

Outside the purple splashes of doom though I've managed pretty well for a first introduction.
It's just conceptually bad. I can't counter them until they start doing random crap.

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Velona13 wrote:

My favourite are running out of a Heist during lockdown and getting 3-4 Magma Barrier mobs with Orbs chasing you. It’s almost impossible to stop and interact with the door so your rogue can start unlocking it as you are running for your death.

Use a key bind for this. Mine is ; You don't need to click on the doors.

I really like the idea behind Archnemesis. Tougher enemies spread all over Wreaclast promising great loot - a great idea!

But the execution is just a disaster.

How is that supposed to work? Yellow monsters in that vary in difficulty between "trash" and "god-like"? Combined with the fact that in the hustle and bustle (and with the extreme speed at which the battles now proceed) you can hardly tell which modifications are involved. Also exciting: monsters that appear out of nowhere (Breach, Strongboxes etc.) or congregate in a very small space (e.g. Heist - I just had it - four rares, two uniques and a locked door, at least one monster was "hasted" and the map also already had increased monster movement and attack speed. Impossible). None of this can work when it comes to monsters that can knock you out in one hit. (and are so fast that you can hardly react or just run away).

In my opinion, Archnemesis still needs a lot of work to make it playable and really fun again. Or to put it another way: with a different preparation and execution, players would probably have bowed down to GGG because they would have been hugely excited about the introduction of stronger monsters that promise great loot.

How about, for example, clearly differentiating the Rare monsters according to difficulty? Maybe with a "star rating"? One star for easy and three or four stars for ultra-hard. Or with a colour coding? Why not invent red and purple (...) monsters that clearly indicate how difficult they are? Of course, all this would mean rebalancing the modifications and their interaction with each other. Perhaps even in a form where certain combinations are excluded. Also, the whole interaction with other league mechanics would have to be rebalanced. But that should be doable, right?

I'm almost certain that the fan community would have been immensely pleased if GGG had introduced Archnemesis in such or similar form.

But just saying "Hey, Rare monsters can now be anything from ultra-light to absolutely-lethal - you'll be fine" is somehow very, very simplistic thinking.

That's just a quick opinion from me - a minor, older casual gamer who likes to play SSF and dies a lot. Normally I don't get upset about it because I am neither a good player nor can and want to reach the absolute highest content of the game. But when I am just a passenger of a somehow rather badly balanced system, I do find it stupid and lose the fun.

But I'm counting on GGG. Last summer, after the introduction of 3.15, I was similarly frustrated, but then had a lot of fun again from 3.16 onwards.

The crucial design flaw IMO regarding Archnemesis is AN rares should be either tanky (Juggernaut, Steel-infused, Overcharged) or dangerous (Bombardier, the "Touched" ones), not both. Being both tanky and overpowered should be a characteristic of only Uber and Pinnacle bosses.

That being said, Archnemesis Monsters should all have just ONE mod as default, and they should get extra mods only from Atlas Passives specialization. Then normalize the loot so harder monsters drop more items (quantity and/or rarity) but remove the deterministic drops so we don't have "loot goblins". Also, address these specific issues:

- Heralding Minions / Heralds of the Storm are redundant. Remove one of them, also reduce the number of totems by 2 or 3.
- Magma Barrier is a dangerous mod so reduce or remove its "defensive" phase.
- Storm Strider: the amount of Lightning Mirages spawned at once must be reduced.
- Frost Strider / Frostweaver / Toxic / Chaosweaver : their ground DOTs need better visibility just as the same way as Incendiary.

As for blues, they should have only very baseline mods: extra fast, extra damage, Life Regen... In other words, bring back the old Bloodlines mods for them.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.