I think that it is fine that Uber Abby has his own separate loot table from regular Abby.
The entire point of Uber Abby is: 1) additional challenge that players opt into; and 2) to be an obstacle for access to his loot table.
FOMO does not apply here because it is not EHG’s problem that a player feels FOMO in regards to an uber boss. FOMO is more applicable to transactional things like a supporter pack or timeframe for an event. Uber Abby is in the game and will continue to be in the game. Whatever motivates you to try to kill Uber Abby is for you to decide. If someone has FOMO over it, that is their problem.
For some, they are the reason they play the game (collect most powerful items). For others (like me) items are a means to the end of killing bosses. In some situations they are for your current build / character, in others they motivate you trying another build / character.
I think the main reason Uberroth has exclusive drops is to motivate players who are loot driven. For these players, uberroth having no exclusive loot drops would make conquering him feel “empty”.
What is the utility of those drops? To push higher corruption or arena, or just to have the most powerful otems in the game.
The problem with the mentality of the OP, is that it is basically saying that its bad to gate drops behind content players cant complete… but many players will never kill a harbinger!! So should we drop all the best items at the start of monos for them?
Surely he will say im being extreme, hes only talking about one endboss, but for many of us the problem with ARPGs is that they are too easy, finish too soon, provide little real adversity or challenge. Taking away motivation to conquer one of the modestly harder challenges in the game is only thinking of yourself. I for one would like 10 bosses as hard as uberroth (i have downed him yet, but i will, and then i will be slightly sad to have finished it all) but maybe, just maybe, ill get some super cool drop for another class/build that will get me excited to try that.
I understand your sentiment but I completely disagree with your assertion that there will be FOMO or any kind of compulsory feeling towards needing to kill Ubby. The reason is that Last Epoch has been beautifully designed in a way that gear does not (generally speaking) define a build. Your gear supports your build - not the other way around. With the game designed this way, no gear feels mandatory - you can make just about any build work with any gear. Exalted items in every slot can support just about any build you can think of - uniques just simply are not a requirement.
With that said, yes there are plenty of uniques that can and will produce a fairly substantial power boost to most builds, but having only a few powerful uniques locked behind a very tough boss does not generate the problem that you are claiming it does.
i come from poe. watchers eyes are not compulsory but theyre more or less one of the best jewels to always have.
for players trying out the game. when they go in blind. they would naturally just play the game. but once they start hitting the end game, they would research on how to get stronger. that will lead them to checking item databases. which would lead them to find out the existence of items gated far ahead.
in my particular case i m already struggling at c200. regular abby is at 300 and ubby is what? estimated 500? i dont know.
because i know theres a lot of progression before i can reach him. all it makes me feel now is salty that i didnt roll MG. where would have the option to just outright buy what i want despite being weaker.
as for everyone saying theres no fomo. i feel you guys are being very dismissive. i m already experiencing fomo and i m telling you that it can create fomo but you guys just hand wave it away.
speak for yourself.
i own a ton of 3 mod watchers eyes on poe. and i can tell you with complete confidence they’re all bought.
in Grim dawn, they have uber hidden bosses that are super OP and just bullshit to deal with.
They too have strong exclusive gear gatekept behind these ungodly bosses. but the big difference is even at theory craft level, you can actually realize they’re really good but not BIS.
thus thats the biggest difference. you really dont feel like you need to do them because the gear you farmed up could be even better for your current build compared to what the OP boss dropped.
i have played GD on and off for years. i’ve played many different builds that i researched and built myself. not once did i feel like dayum. i MUST kill this boss to farm his exclusive drop.
ZERO.
now that i know that one of the best relics and arguably the best relic for most builds is gated behind ubby.
i now have to consider. do i want to reroll and try following a build guide to make sure i m optimized enough to fight ubby
or do i reroll and go MG to simply buy the relic from other players and skip Ubby entirely.
i can understand why you’re excited.
but for me its the complete opposite. i want to enjoy the game by doing my own thing. experimenting etc.
i’ve already paraphrased asmon and josh.
i dont want to feel forced to hyperoptimize in order to clear content. if wanted that, i d play poe1. i’ve already learn to hate poe1 which punishes most of the player base who dont follow builds. i m not keen for LE to turn into another POE1
existence of tough content which feels compulsory forces players to play a certain way.
I’m definitely in the camp that content in a game that is not intended for the majority of players to overcome should not drop exclusive gear with unique abilities (and ABSOLUTELY not build-enabling). I also think any such drop should be “soulbound”. I can’t stand PoE1 being designed around trade, and I LOVE that LE has a non-trade option.
Cosmetics are great - I love that aspect of PoE challenges.
In the original Diablo 2, the extremely difficult Pandemonium bosses drop a large charm with a bunch of stats. Sure, it’s a powerful charm, but it’s just power. It’s basically an achievement you could show off before achievements were a thing.
Honestly, the solution is flat simple in my opinion - Pinnacle content that is only intended to have a small percentage of people finish should drop shiny exclusive… cosmetics.
Boom, done. The chase item is there. The “Look what I did!” aspect is there. What’s not there? The feeling of “I’ll never be able to do x because I’ll never be able to get y item for my build”.
World of Warcraft had a phenomenal approach to this kind of thing for much of the optional extreme difficulty content (at least back when they still had a soul): Titles, pets, toys, special color versions of gear, etc. Cosmetics.
I know that no one probably cares, but I just quit the game yesterday after a few tries on Uber Abberoth. I had all my gear on my Paladin: 3.5k HP, 7k armor, 100% block with 65% damage reduction. And I got one-shotted three times around the 10–12 minute mark by the Triple Flail Slam, which did about 4.5–4.7k damage each time.
Maybe it’s a skill issue, but f**k it… I didn’t like first version of T4 Jurla, the Harbingers, or the original Abberoth either. I dropped 1.1 quickly because my build wasn’t Static Orb. Came back on 1.1 Refresh with a Static Orb Sorc and had an absolute BLAST and so much FUN.
Right now, if I want to fight Uber, I’d probably have to go for a Crow BeastMaster build.
But I’m just dropping it again—I’m gonna go play Oblivion or Expedition 33 instead.
If a game has content that clearly isn’t for me, then I just don’t play that game.
I’ve put 12k hours into D2 and 10k into PoE, but if a game starts introducing content purely for streamers or broken builds, then I’m out.
I enjoy all the Souls games—if someone wants to talk about skill, those games are skill-based. In Souls, you don’t have a constant visual storm of bulls**t on your screen.
So yeah, I think this boss should be 100% optional.
Exactly my thoughts, when EHG introduced Uber Aberroth and 2 his MI items
Personally - I will avoid Ubby. And will play as I want, not how I may be forced to. Even some new woven echoes are hard as hell and should be revised, no need to say, how harder is Ubby
Sure, but there’s the other side of it too. I have also played GD on and off for years. Not once did I feel like I had to kill the super bosses, so I never did. Not once. I never even tried it.
That becomes a problem where the devs introduce a boss to the game and then no one cares about him and tries to kill him simply because he has no drops worth of it. It’s wasted effort.
And that leads to the devs not implementing more bosses in the future, because what’s the point?
I agree that pinnacle content should never drop build enabling gear. But I don’t agree that they shouldn’t have exclusive gear that is BiS.
It took me 4-5 months until I decided to do Aby in 1.1. Not once did I think I was missing out because I didn’t have a nihilis. All my builds worked perfectly fine without it.
That wouldn’t work for most players though. I would have never tried to kill Aby if all I got was MTX. Most players wouldn’t.
But knowing that he had a very good drop that isn’t actually required but is very good made me want to push a build that could kill him.
If there’s no real incentive to kill a boss (and MTX alone isn’t enough), then very few people will try it and very few bosses get added in the future.
There is no fomo, this has nothing to do with what I think and what you think.
What you feeling is something different.
FOMO (Fear of missing out) is when there is a thing limited time available. But this is not the case.
You could make the argument that if you play Season you might not be able to get this thing in time before the season is over, but that is a very, very long time, even for more casual players.
But that is a issue with players wanting “the best” asap on the direct route.
This is something i see more often these days.
There is something between having a crappy jewel or a few passives points on the tree and swapping over to a Watcher’s Eye. There is progression. Getting a better rare jewel or slightly altering the passive tree before having the Watcher’s Eye.
Progression is essential for these types of games and just because there are some people who feel the way you do (not sure how many) doesn’t mean these things shouldn’t exist.
Watcher’s Eye are not build enabling at all, they just enhance your build power and it doesn’t change anything if you don’t have them other than some DPS or defense numerics changing.
Aberroth unlocks at 300c and Uber Aberroth unlocks at 500 corruption, but from a difficulty perspective they are a bit above these thresholds. Even though thery are a very mechnical fight and you can definitely defeat them direclty when unlocking them, if you really play the fight well.
Saying that you don’t need the best loot in a loot based game is a contradiction. You absolutely need 3LP items, Uber abby, majasa items etc. It’s why we are here. It’s a hunt for the best items and Min/Maxing so we can have fun.
This is it, we need chase items. Hard content should reward the very best gear. That’s why we push 1,000 corruption, and farm Ubers. Making it so any build or anyone can get the best gear removes the dopamine of finding good items. It removes the progression and satisfaction of upgrades and achievements.
I think you’re confusing need (my build is enabled by this item) with want (I wants the shiny).
This is true, and its ok as long as said best gear isn’t required for a build to function (see need/want).
Yes & no. If someone with sufficient skill could do the pinnacle content with worse gear, is that bad? Is it similarly bad if a less effective/powerful build could do that content with better gear or a more skilled player?
Not necessarily. It would definitely remove the e-peen if any mouthbreather could roll their faces across the keyboard and out pops the best gear from the hardest boss.
TL;DR: Especially today, never EVER underestimate the power of achievement. Or for the more egotistical among us: e-peen.
This may have been true in the pre-internet past - only the most dedicated fans would make the push to beat challenges with no power rewards - but just look around at the industry today. Games like PoE are funded nearly exclusively by people saying, “I want the thing that grants 0 power but looks shiny or let’s me show off”. Fortnight is quite possibly the biggest money making game in history - and it’s free except for things people can use to show off to others.
Now, I think this is a TERRIBLE trend and shows just how much our society is suffering from Social Media bulls**t. But it is the reality. In this reality, you’d be amazed by what percentage of people will push to the ends of the earth for a title or alternate skin.
Also take a look at things like Speedrunning. It is literally nothing but insane challenges people designed for themselves just because they wanted to. The whole point is to replay the game form scratch each time, so power is obviously unrelated. People dedicate 10’s of thousands of hours to these. You may think it’s a niche thing, but it is so popular that the two yearly charity events they run - Awesome Games Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick - generate several MILLION dollars EACH for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Doctor’s Without Borders, respectively. And lest you think this doesn’t count for ARPGs, Diablo 2 is a popular game to speedrun. Here’s an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOFKp3VHdW0
And lastly, for a personal anecdote: As mentioned, I used to play WoW. In the Cataclysm expansion, there was a fight in which the mechanics made the 10-man raid version, which is intended to be the easier version and rewards a full tier lower level loot, ended up drastically harder than the 25-man raid version. Because of this, guilds like mine pushed hard to beat this challenge and proudly showed off our 0-power rewards - the title “of the Nightfall” and a black drake mount for 1 raid member. Once we succeeded, we kept pushing kills to get more members the drake, even though we already had the title and the gear was effectively worthless.
I’m not understimating them. I’m just saying that if you have a BiS gear behind a pinnacle boss, 20% of players will go after him and 10% will beat him.
If you just have MTX, 2% of players will go after him and 1% will beat him.
(made up numbers, of course).
It will create a vast decrease on the number of people that actually interact with that mechanic. Which means there are less incentives for devs to add pinnacle bosses.
Pinnacle bosses already are, by their very nature, content that most people don’t interact with. If you reduce the incentives, even less people will.
As a personal anecdote as well: I have never once tried to engage with superbosses in GD in several years. They don’t give me any loot I need. But they do have achievements. And even though I actually try to complete achievements (sometimes going out of my way for them), it has never seemed worth it to do so for the superbosses.
Obviously not everyone will and obviously some amount more people will push for something with a power gain or exclusive effect than would for purely cosmetic effects.
But I think people often can’t see the forest through the trees on design decisions like this. If the content is explicitly stated to have an expected kill rate of less than 1% (9 out of 1000 was stated earlier), then changing the rewards from power to cosmetic has nearly exclusively positive outcomes - people that relish the challenge will still go for it, people that want to show off will still go for it, and people that felt like they have to go for it because loot is the game no longer feel the need to reduce their own fun (changing builds, reading guides, etc) seeking to do what the game is telling them they should do.
In regards to the earlier debate about development time on bosses, I believe that the history of games clearly demonstrates that the fear that “no good loot means no one will try which means the devs won’t make more tough bosses” is extremely overblown. Is it possible? Yes. But I put the likelihood at less than the rate of expected kills on said boss. (less than 1%, in case that was a confusing turn of phrase.)
This is where I disagree. Yes, only 1% are expected to get it. But with rewards, more people will engage with it. Some might even get surprised and succeed.
But if the rewards are only MTX and doesn’t actually do anything in the game, then instead of 10% of people engaging with the boss and 1% managing to kill it, then you have 1% of people engaging with the boss and 0.5% end up killing him.
And if only 1% of your players will even engage with a boss, why would you bother adding another boss to the game? Barely anyone will play it.
Whereas, as we can see by steam achievements, the current system means that uber maven was killed by 10% of people. People will actually try to engage with a system if it has tangible rewards. Most won’t if it doesn’t.
So yes, the e-peen crowd would still try to do the content. But no one else would. At which point, why should you add more content like that?
Is it, though? The percentage of players that killed uber bosses in PoE is much higher than the percentage of players that killed the superbosses in GD.
You’re talking about real-money bought stuff, right? Not actual in-game achievements…
Why would you compare buying shiny stuff to having to dedicate yourself entirely for killing a single boss?
I’m on the side of the players that would never try to kill a hard boss if all they had to offer was silly useless MTX… Yes, this is cool, but for an MMO, where you actually interact with people everywhere and people will actually acknowledge you for what you’re wearing. It has no uses for me in a poe-clone.
And yes, some people like those in poe-clones too, but then they just might as well BUY them, not waste their whole evening just for trying.
