Pinnacle boss designs are questionable

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Genstein wrote:

I think fair enough if anyone reading someone's feedback has counterpoints, but lately there's a lot of slamming new threads,

Yea I dont know about lately or not or slamming. I guess if people are using their exalt orbs on threads that's their idea of feedback?. As long as its not breaking any forum guidelines its probably okay, the mods are pretty strict here what can or cannot be said.

Can't just have endless threads of saying yes to each other because we feel that we are being combative with disagreeing. Constructive arguing is required, not just in a forum about a video game, but everything in life.

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Genstein wrote:

Easier access to practice runs would excuse a lot of common difficulty-inducing mechanics. But again, I really enjoy PoE bossing! Just pointing out that there is some validity in here.

I am very much on the side of no for this. I think having practice runs are even worse than looking up a guide. Because now you want to experience a guide with 0 risk.

Would make killing the boss, not your first kill you would have already done it however many times in practice before actually doing it for real. Part of the reward in POE is risking, you have 6 attempts to piece things together in a single run.

We already have a psuedo version of this, you can just load up a standard character. Which may not be an option for a brand new player. But its up to them how they want to experience gaming. If they feel like the OP does, then sure they can look up all the guides they want or feel they have to. To say that the majority of players feel this way, I would disagree with. I dont think the majority of gamers (especially non-hardcore gamers) intentionally spoil things without at least making an attempt before researching things.

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Chickenwink wrote:

Can't just have endless threads of saying yes to each other because we feel that we are being combative with disagreeing. Constructive arguing is required, not just in a forum about a video game, but everything in life.

Agreed entirely, and not just for ironic purposes. I'm less fond of the replies which boil down to "You're wrong, [and incidentally/because] you suck, consider sucking less", optionally cloaked in half-assed empathy.

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Chickenwink wrote:

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Genstein wrote:

Easier access to practice runs

I am very much on the side of no for this. I think having practice runs are even worse than looking up a guide. Because now you want to experience a guide with 0 risk.

Would make killing the boss, not your first kill you would have already done it however many times in practice before actually doing it for real. Part of the reward in POE is risking, you have 6 attempts to piece things together in a single run.

Fair enough. Outside hardcore, the only risk seems to me to be the grind back to the boss. Feels like a tax on time more than excitingly high stakes. Other games with hard bosses have a challenge which isn't lessened by easier (infinite) repeats until victory. Maybe this would be a negative for PoE, I don't know.

I like the notion of shortened loops around (less maps per Eater/Exarch, fewer guardians per Elder/Shaper, etc.) or some access to (perhaps limited) lootless practice runs *after* beating that boss once on an account (so you have to nail-bite it the first time, but then you can improve without grind). It'd also be a shortcut for newer players who haven't had a decade of practice.

A downside I could see would be devaluing the bosses, er, specialness, for want of an actual word, importance, significance, through repeat at will. But in a world where a sackfull of rubber-stamped Feared can be thrown into a T17 for funzies, I think that ship may have sailed.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

When it comes to bosses and mechanic-learning on that level....there is a certain amount of "are you good enough?".

Not everyone has equal gaming ability. Not everyone has the same experience with similar games. Not everyone has the same reflexive responses. Some players can just be "bad" at bosses. Not due to design or anything, just simply worse than another player.

I suspect I'm bad at bosses. I play a lot of games with hard bosses, and love it. Give me a game where I can throw myself at a tough but fair boss repeatedly for a few hours until I learn every move and counter, and I'm super happy.

My two biggest weaknesses in bossing in PoE are probably that I lack split second reaction time (so Atziri flameblast and some Shaper beams are only often rather than always dodgeable, though most other mechanics are, but bullet hell and Exarch ball phase are just not happening), and I have very little tolerence for grinding back to a boss for a retry. (Edit: There are others. My character control is mediocre at best. I can manage workmanlike but rarely stylish. And so on.)

So I tend to improve on a league by league basis rather than hour by hour. If I can't repeat the content in a short amount of time, I'll just outgear it. This removes the mechanical challenge, which is less fun, but it's more fun than grinding out repeats. Heck with that.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Shaper slam I understood the very first time I ever saw it...I'm not really sure how anyone can describe that as not telegraphed.

Maybe I'm over-stating that, my bad if so. It's telegraphed in the sense that when A happens, B will happen, it's super-distinctive, timing is always the same, and you have plenty of reaction time. But to me (maybe just me), telegraphing means you have a clue *what* will happen when you see the cues the first time. Black blob into black blob elsewhere didn't mean anything to me the first time, until I either got a slam to the face or avoided one by coincidence, I forget, and then "oh, it's a slam". Hypothetical boss with big hammer slowly pulls back big hammer and muscles tense, okay he's going to slam.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Maven fight is pretty darn telegraphed across the entire fight. Even Sirus was well telegraphed, he was just really hard to navigate because of my OTHER issues. Infinite Hunger thing took two tries, the first I ran around blind and the second I saw the flow of the floor and it just made logical sense to "follow" the current. Why else would something like that exist?

Agreed Maven and Sirus are pretty well telegraphed. Sirus is one of my favourite fights. So would Maven be except for the memory game. The brain arena explosion, stand on the now-existent edges, got me the first time, that's Shaper slam territory for me, it's obvious after the fact.

Infinite Hunger, well, you did better than I. Slugging match with a snorkling Golgothan, followed by a sludge island. I didn't notice the sludge was going anywhere in particular. I still have no idea how you're supposed to either break him out of his submerged pursuit phase, or survive it other than tanking/luck. But since the fight sucks hard, and is easily bypassed by moderate DPS, I've not bothered to find out.

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Genstein wrote:

I suspect I'm bad at bosses. I play a lot of games with hard bosses, and love it. Give me a game where I can throw myself at a tough but fair boss repeatedly for a few hours until I learn every move and counter, and I'm super happy.

Don't forget that you are playing PoE....it is likely at a completely different speed than any other game you play with "hard" bosses. It is REALLY hard to compare bosses from one game to another because they have to "fit" into the reality of the gameplay.

You are NEVER going to get a Dark Souls boss, or a D4 boss, or an <insert name here> boss in this game...because it just wouldn't work. As such, some of the "telegraphs" are generally FASTER in this game. And its perfectly fine to miss it the first few times.

But remember we have SIX portals for these bosses. You have SIX tries per encounter to figure things out...that is MORE than enough for basically every boss in this game. People who require a guide even after all that are just not really paying attention to what's happening...but its the actual mechanical learning that might take more time. But that requires no guide.


We do have a problem with some bosses being gated behind WAY too much time; that is true and could be tweaked. But at the same time, giving everyone "free" access to the bosses is also not the right answer. It is unnecessary and removes any kind of challenge and risk.

Thanks for the comments. Honestly I always assume good intentions from the forum posters. I try not to piss people off, but I am perhaps too focused on new player experiences because every person I have even seen pick this game up dropped it hard.

Maybe I am too out of left field with my feedback and opinions, but I feel like bosses should be a nice epic moment or celebration of the game. I feel like the pinnacle bosses as is don't really fit that niche. I feel like the league mechanic bosses do a very good job of that, although they are much simplier and easier. Not that the pinnacles are that much harder with how scaling and build design works. In my opinion bosses that focus on a few mechanics are more enjoyable then those that have a lot of micromanaging of boss patterns. Like I would rather the voidstone be behind Aul or Catarina than exarch and eater. They could even just have each voidstone be locked behind like 2 or 3 league mechanics. I dunno, that might be me wishing the tools for making maps harder and reward scaling was a mapping mechanic.

Give the pinnacle bossses something really cool, like some sort of strange new crafting tool, a way to empower characters better, like some sort of qol power scaling. Something neat and memorable and a cooler reward with killing something like the eater of worlds. Hell I would be happy with an identify all button.

I feel like most of what I said is so mired in opinion that it would be difficult to justify or prove in any way, as most feedback is. Maybe when Poe2 gets to a good spot, the remaining devs will go hog wild with changes in Poe, and perhaps I will see if they decide to make any changes to these bosses.

In any case it looks like some drastic changes are coming in the next few years, who knows.

Again thanks for the comments.

Catarina is one of the worst bosses EVER in PoE...definitely don't want her to be anywhere near the voidstones.

I think the only thing you really have a problem with is that the fight is...over too fast. To make a boss fight like the shaper feel more "epic", it simply needs to last longer than it does. But that is also very NOT PoE.

To me, every boss feels PLENTY epic. The monster is huge, they do some crazy things, they have their own voice acting, the arenas are utilized well, they can one shot you, etc. I'm not sure what more you could even ask of the bosses to make them more "epic" apart from just multiplied their health by 100x.

Personally, I don't think your post has anything to do with the "new player" either...you are talking in terms of 10+ divines, invitations, multi-boss fighting, and endgame content that the vast majority of new players don't even reach. Right there your comments are clearly personal-based and not "for the newer players". I'd also argue that a newer player is LESS likely to follow a guide for a boss fight, unless they are explicitly told to do so. More often than not, new players experience the game, not master the game.


However, I TOTALLY agree that the bosses need some kind of unique reward associated with each of them so that players WANT to challenge them over and over again. The removal of boss uniques into cards and the general pool was such a huge mistake imo.