Uber endgame and why it's so bad.

Uber versions of endgame bosses have been added recently and have become a new horizon of achievement for HCSSF racers/e-sportsmen. Of course, regular players also have access to this content, but there are problems that should be taken into account.


1. Hidden timer.

This is not about a timer in the usual sense, similar to the one in Obas Cursed Throw, which kills the character after the time has elapsed. It's about the fact that it is more profitable and easier for the player to end the battle as quickly as possible. And he is motivated in this ground effects, the duration and sustain of the flasks, and the profit per hour.
No one will now go for the uber version of the boss without the guarantee of a quick victory, otherwise the victory may become impossible. Therefore, builds of 300-900kk dps exist and are popular. I will discuss the impact of such builds on the game in another post.


2. Availability of uber versions of bosses.

Previously, in order to get to the uber version of the boss, whether it was Uber Atziri or Uber Elder, it was necessary to collect fragments. At the moment, I consider the Uber Elder system to be the best, since Shaper and Elder have guaranteed loot. In the situation with the new Uber versions of bosses, we just need to spend 1 point on Keystone. And that's it. A normal invite is fine for running the uber version. And it breaks the economy. No-lifer can run 60 Uber Exarchs per hour, buys invitations in bulk, they are getting more expensive. Loot is getting cheaper. And it makes no sense for the average player to run the normal version of the boss, as the cost of trying outweighs the benefits. The chance of dropping an amulet is 2%, this is 50 attempts on average. 50 invites is 1300 maps on average. Run through 1300 maps to get 50 invitations worth 45 divines in total, after running through which there is a chance to get an amulet worth 15-20 divines. If you're lucky.
Do not forget that the average player may not be able to fight with 220+ quantity invitations, and do it all day to pay off on lucky drops.
This is a local example, but the situation applies to all other uber bosses.


These are the main and very significant problems that need to be addressed.

Solutions I can offer:

1. Rework the uber bosses, revising the concept of the fight difficulty, where a long battle is not punished, but encouraged. The boss shouldn't be impassable just because the floor is full of degen.

2. Abandon the Keystone system for getting uber versions of bosses, replacing it with the usual "drop a few fragments from the normal version of the boss" This will increase the relevance of the normal version of the boss and increase the value of the uber versions of the boss.

"

moonretealoud wrote:

2. Availability of uber versions of bosses.

this is probably the biggest problem I have with the design of "pinnacle" bosses and their aspiration to be a goal for a character. There is no progression towards them. I find it to be a lazy design choice.

It would be probably better for the game economy if the encounters were more rare while some of the more unique drops would be more common.

The uber bosses are quite different from uber aztiri or uber elder because the loot table is actually largely the same. Atziri have vompletely different drops on alluring and apex, same for uber elder vs regular elder

I dont find the introduction of ubers had any impact of profitability of regular bosses, most of the ubers additional rewards are either underwhelming(uber maven just garantees an elevated sext, uber sirus drops the same awakened gems maven drops) ou very rng-reliant(uber shaper drops more conflicts, read: you "only" need to kill 25-ish times instead of 50-ish... still damm rare, uber venarius garantees 3 mods of a rather large pool, chances are still heavily against you). The real selling point of u ers are the exclusive drops, and anyone that tried to farm ubers can atest: the drop rate of those is extremely spartan. On the 1%-esque, much rarer than ashes or onmiscience

All in all, ubers are not really devaluating the regulars as the gpod stuff that only they drop takes seriously a ton of tries. Its still worth to kill eater ans searing yourself: even if takes more tries to get ashes or crystalized compared to just selling the invites and buying the amulets, you still can get exceptional curency and forbidden jewelery to close the aparent price bridge. Killing uber eater or searing 40-ish times over regulars is not likely to get you any extra other than a bunch of extra exceptional orbs

I agree with this post 100%.

Doing a less powerfull or slow build, or even investing in defences feels so bad for uber bosses...

Hopes that get fixed for poe 2 at least.

"uber uber" versions of ALL bosses are the pinnacle of lazy design in fairness.

All they did was:

- massive damage reduction
- increased attack/cast speed and multiple projectiles and aoe
- alot of degen as "soft enrage" mechanic

Not very creative for a company that is constantly pating themselves on the back saying how good they are when they design things.
Lets not forget that this "uber ubers" also fail on the basic risk/reward ration as usual from tggg. It's all tied to a slot machine if you got what you wanted or you got something expensive to sell or the usual garbage you found on your quest boss.

Im fine with there beeing uber bosses, but for me there is a mental block to acutally run a boss, when the same fragment(s) can be used by a player that has specialised into the fight and gets more out of it than me (atlas passive nodes / Uber-only drops...)

I would much rather prefer it, if all pinnacle bosses would drop the same for everyone and Uber-bosses are accessed by uber fragments that drop from these fights.

This way everyone can get the same out of the base fight and there is no additional incentive to sell the fragment other than if i want to do it and if i can handle the fight.

TLDR: make all uber boss systems like elder / atziri
remove all possible investmens for better boss loot and only increase drop-
rate of base invitations / base Fragments for investing in the atlas tree

So the crazy thing is, the uber versions of bosses aren't actually more profitable than the normal ones. There's a bunch of people with YT videos showing this. One guy I saw recently ran 144 of each of normal Exarch and Uber Exarch and concluded that while both lose currency, the uber version lost more (it gained a valuable drop but also gained a ton of non-valuable drops that diluted the pool). To this day I have not seen evidence that uber bossing outside of the first week of the league or doing boss carries actually makes you a profit.

So if you want to run the fights run them. But if you want to make a profit, sell the keys.

"

Xystre wrote:

"uber uber" versions of ALL bosses are the pinnacle of lazy design in fairness.

All they did was:

- massive damage reduction
- increased attack/cast speed and multiple projectiles and aoe
- alot of degen as "soft enrage" mechanic

Not very creative for a company that is constantly pating themselves on the back saying how good they are when they design things.
Let’s not forget that this "uber ubers" also fail on the basic risk/reward ration as usual from tggg. It's all tied to a slot machine if you got what you wanted or you got something expensive to sell or the usual garbage you found on your quest boss.

Uninspired Uber bosses is good design though. The idea of an Uber boss is to let normal players still experience the fight through the normal version and make the Uber version available for those that can handle it. If GGG wanted these fights to be drastically different it would make more sense to simply design a brand new boss with very high difficulty.