In almost every ARPG that i have played, the devs tend to block narrow passages in some places with obstacles or barriers. I’m not entirely sure why this feature is so popular amongst developers because at least the players, whom i know of, are far less enthusiastic about it. In the best case imho the player’s reaction is to shrug his shoulders and accept the immutable with grace.
Maybe these barriers are so popular because they create some sort of randomness? This kind of randomness however seems meaningless to me, because it does not really change the way a player perceives a zone. But maybe the developers hope, that miraculously this randomness will turn the run into a fresh experience. Or maybe it is just a method of prolonging the task for the sake of prolonging it, idk.
Be that as it may - for once in the Temporal Sanctum the barriers actually felt very much ok to me. And i know why: because of the fast and responsive timeshift ability with its very satisfying “smacky” sound the obstacles are not just meaningless nuisances anymore. No - they become part of the gameplay. " Oh i’m blocked" - smack - “Cool i can go there… shit five poison dudes” smack…"
That’s fun and in most cases you don’t even have to backtrack.
But in the Soulfire Bastion my feelings about these barriers are the exact opposite: i hate them from the very depth of my heart. And again i know why: The reward structure of the Soulfire Bastion heavily incentivises clearing as many mobs as possible, ideally all of them. But the level design with its countless barriers torpedoes this noble incentive. If you try to clear the whole thing you run into dead ends all the time and spend what feels like at least a quarter of the whole run with backtracking.
Furthermore unlike in Temporal Sanctum the barriers contribute nothing to the gameplay. They are just dull, dumb obstacles, nothing more.
Well - this feedback got a tad longer than i had anticipated :D. Ty for reading. What do you guys think?
Randomness is exactly their purpose. People have been asking for randomized maps for a long time now, and this was an attempt to to provide that. IMO, it hasn’t worked because it hasn’t hit the underlying desire for randomness (exploring new areas) while creating other issues that are generally not desirable in ARPGs (i.e. backtracking). I hope they eventually try another solution instead.
For me there actually doesnt need to be random map layouts at all to feel different each map, the content inside the map should be enough. PoE for example a lot of maps are static or have 2 versions but are fundamentally the same but the map is bloated with random content so a static layout is welcome
I personally cannot stand the dungeons for the thread reason, Lightless Arbor so far is the best one due to layout/atmosphere. Soul Bastion is horrible to me, I hate the blocked pathways and almost meaningless maze like design. Temporal is bad too but passable due to Timeshift but I still rarely go there
I would prefer they were way more linear but actually difficult, for example room where you get trapped and 4 rares spawn immediately and you cannot pass until you/them are dead, or something that actually requires some usage of the immunity instead of running perma Fire Immunity until the boss and switching to Necrotic
Another idea entirely could be a speed based dungeon, you have a time limit per floor to kill certain amount of enemies to open the next floor, if you dont the area fills with some kind of death and you need to leave or you die
I play Project Zomboid which has a static map but all loot/zombies/placements are random each game, the game doesnt really suffer from being boring just because you know where certain safehouses are each game, its the content that changes that makes it fresh each time
I don’t have a lot of experience in Soulfire Bastion yet but I think I will agree with you. They are fun in Temporal Sanctum, but they do strike me as something bad in Soulfire Bastion.
This is particularly evident in the new patch. As the OP mentioned, the mechanics of Soulfire Bastion strongly encourage you to do full clears in order to maximize your currency for gambling. The constant backtracking is therefore already mildly irritating.
Unfortunately, it appears that unlike Julra, the boss in Soulfire Bastion doesn’t have a guaranteed drop on each run meaning that I’m averaging a boss drop every 3 runs or so at the moment (albeit only 15 runs in so far). So now I’m being discouraged from doing full runs while farming the new boss uniques because I’ll do a full clear of Soul Bastion then kill the boss and get…some gold. And have to start the whole process again. The same thing is the case with the Arena bosses so I’m shelving things again for a bit as the annoyance just isn’t worth it at the moment.
Just one broader comment about the game in general. There seems to be an increasing focus on making things more “grindy” of late. Such is the nature of ARPGs and we all enjoy that play-style to some extent but grinding for the sake of grinding without commensurate reward just becomes a chore. Hopefully LE doesn’t head down the path of POE and start taking player time for granted for some perceived need to “force engagement”. By all means, make me earn my rewards. But please don’t gate and slow content unnecessarily in the hopes that it will make players stick around longer. I think that’s an outdated idea that POE pushed for far too long and got punished for a few leagues ago when people realised how the game was actually disrespecting their time.
