Don’t get me wrong, the unique mechanic in each is interesting, but outside of that…they kinda suck.
They’re all still essentially, wander around a slightly randomized path until you find a door, do the same thing in the next area except now the enemies are a little stronger, fight boss. Oh, and you’re suddenly playing on hardcore because if you die once, you get kicked out. Also if you get disconnected.
I don’t hate the whole 1 life thing, but it certainly feels needlessly punishing for anyone who hasn’t already done the dungeon several times. There absolutely needs to be some way for you to learn the boss fight without needing to burn through keys every time you die. And I just don’t understand why it makes sense to get kicked out of the dungeon if you crash or DC. Its not my fault the game has bugs and connection issues sometimes, and even if it were, I don’t see how that’s a reasonable punishment, It just makes me not want to do dungeons.
Are dungeons better, because you only have 1 life each attempt, as opposed to…say, 3 lives? Is there any reason why getting disconnected should kick you out and require another key to try again? Is there any reason you can’t learn a boss outside of throwing another key into the toilet every time you see a new mechanic?
Would it ruin the game if you had unlimited lives in T1, 10 lives in T2, 3 lives in T3, and 1 in T4? and a crash/connection error didn’t send you back to town? I certainly wouldn’t have grown to hate dungeons if that were the case. So there are my suggestions. A way to practice a boss outside of run, that didn’t drop anything or count towards prophecies might be nice as well, because bosses in this game are fun.
There is, though. T1 and T2 Julra. They’re pushovers and you can calmly study their moves so you can adjust accordingly.
Most players just ignore the mechanics at lower tiers because they can tank them and are then surprised when they die at higher tiers.
As someone who was once a new player, I can confirm from experience, they are absolutely not pushovers to new players. Unless you mean because you can out level them easily, which I would consider to be a solution to a problem that simply doesn’t need to exist in the first place.
To myself and anyone else who isn’t a new player anymore, they are complete pushovers, yes. But either way, would it be a negative thing to have a way to practice without the need for a key? I’m not suggesting doing a whole run, with loot and all. Just fight the boss, zero drops if you kill it.
Agreed but to add a small caveat, I think the heart of what the OP was saying is true. The dungeons, even at T4 and after you’ve learned them are still tedious. Some say it takes just like 2 minutes to rush through to the boss, what’s the big deal? Well, since it’s that trivial, why does it continue to stay in place after you’ve successfully completed at a tier.
I don’t mind burning keys because they’re plentiful enough.
Maybe they could introduce an exchange. Once you’ve cleared a tier, any tier below your current highest will allow you to skip the run and spawn at the door of the Dungeon Boss for an equal cost in keys of the tier you’re skipping. So if I’ve cleared Tier 3, I can skip the run up with tier 1 by using 1 key and Tier 2 by using 2 keys.
Just an example but they do get extremely tedious to do especially if you want to do a few back to back to work on several items.
What I meant is that when you’re ready to tackle T3 or T4 Julra you’re usually surprised when her mechanics now kill you. And in that case, you can simply go do T1 Julra and learn her mechanics safely.
You’re not really supposed to be doing Sanctum at early game anyway, you usually only start doing it at empowered monos.
I think the most boring part of the dungeons is the backtracking. You killed mobs, get to a dead end and have to go back through an empty zone. I’d rather they just have one door somewhere in the map, not just along the walls. That way, at least, you’re always fighting mobs, even if they’re kinda easy.
How is running through trash mobs in a dungeon any different from running trash mobs in an echo.
What you’re suggesting is the equivalent of saying that echo mobs are easy, so just spawn me at the echo objective.
I’m kind of two minds about this. On the one hand, yes, they’re plentiful. On the other hand, the margin for error doesn’t exist. If you make a mistake, you have to start over. Or if your cat walks over your keyboard. Or something.
So I get why it’s 1 key 1 try, but I would also get if you got more.
The best solution for this, in my opinion, is the suggestion I made in the other thread, where you can do multiple items at once for lower tiers. Meaning:
-T1 you can do 1 T1 unique
-T2 you can do 1 T2 unique or 2 T1 uniques
-T3 → 1 T3 unique, 2 T2 uniques or 4 T1 uniques
-T4 → 1 T4 unique, 2 T3 uniques, 4 T3 uniques or 8 T1 uniques.
That way, if you have a bunch of lower tier uniques to slam, you can run a higher tier and slam more at once.
As they are? A lot more tedious. But, if they designed the dungeon paths to be more like mono echoes this would make it much less tedious. But as you already stated: The backtracking. And it happens a lot. Even once you get mostly familiar with the various types of layout.
And as I stated, I don’t have a solution (though I do have some ideas one of which I mentioned) but what I’d prefer they don’t do is leave things they way they are. Although, frankly, this might be a moot point. With the Egg now, and the ability to just shove any non-LP unique into it, eventually it might get to the point (speaking only for myself) where I only do TS when I’ve got a really high value LP item and want more guarantee. (Like my 4 LP Smite blade.)
Honestly, they just need to change the layout of the dungon map to be more open-ended like it is on echoes. In echoes you rarely need to backtrack (unless you’re going right and the objective pops up on the left, but in dungeons you don’t have this, so it’s not an issue) because you just walk around the whole map.
Now, the hard part about this is that the dungeon design actually revolves around blocking your path and you needing to navigate both timelines to get through. So how do you fix this so you don’t need to backtrack? Simply introduce a different mechanic where you unlock the path in the other timeline. This way it’s not a maze you have to find the exit for, you can simply walk a straight line, just jumping timelines to open paths.
It would feel more dynamic and less frustrating.
To be entirely fair… the mechanics of dungeons become relevant into empowered monoliths, hence you’ll not only have a bit of experience with a variety of enemy mechanics by then but also your gear will be rather powerful, enough to easily kill T1 or even T2 by then.
Sure, you might die the first 1-2 times but that’s the basic learning period, much like the Gaspar fight tri-beam will kill you the first time very likely.
Agreed, they are outdated content which needs a overhaul, direly.
EHG hasn’t come back to them yet to finally update their boring monotone and outright un-fun mechanics.
The enemies vary in monoliths.
The enemy rewards scale with your corruption in monoliths.
There’s shrines in monoliths.
There’s exiled mages in monoliths.
There’s Nemesis’ in monoliths.
The difference is hence variance, breaking up the monotony.
Also not to speak that each dungeon is 2 monos together with a boss in size. Hence you don’t do a single monolith for your reward but actively double the time engaged into the mechanic. This is also to be taken into consideration.
Tbh I dont really care too much about the 1 life thing, I would never die to the mobs, and if I die to the boss I sorta accept I got owned, its just like any other boss, die? have to start over. Even if it means going through the dungeon again.
The biggest problem is the “Going through the dungeon” the fake meme walls are just so insanely frustrating. I dont care if you make the dungeon linear but take the same average time. I HATE the walls, they feel forced, meme, and trigger some kinda primal urge that makes me MAD.
As a side note, again the DC thing wouldnt need a caveat/mechanic if dungeon DCs were not so insanely common. it seems to be for me personally the ONLY content I dc in currently. I dc about 40-50% of all my runs. I can run monos for legit like 6 hours 0 problems, do an entire campaigns worth of loading screens no hangs or issues. Then I step foot into a dungeon, the content with the highest cost of entry and just keys get deleted.
They really need to fix the dungeon DC bug… Which I know easier said then done, just venting cause it literally killed the cycle for me. I want to progress dungeon items/legendaries to twink out my alts now that I am done with my first character and im roadblocked by DCs.
From what I understand this is because monos work as a sort of unique zone. That is, while you’re in the monoliths, you’re always on the same server. You load echoes, but there isn’t a connection to a new instance itself. It’s the reason why you could stay for a long time in monos during the 1.0 launch clusterf*** week.
I’m certain it doesn’t work exactly like I said, but the point is that monos are a sort of special zone in this regard.
That being said, lots of people complain about this but few complain about campaign load issues. So it’s some specific thing to dungeons that’s causing an abnormally higher DC rate.
So yes, it needs to be fixed and I’m sure they’re looking into it and that it has high priority.
To be entirely fair, thats all well and good, but not information that a new player is privy too.
Speaking as someone who still remembers my first experience with this game, I remember reaching the point that I could choose my faction, circle of fortune, and seeing a prophecy to go kill T1 Julra for some exalted gear of some kind. Obviously I picked that, because it was potentially useful upgrades.
I was being directed (or given the option as if it was something I could do at that point), to go do T1 Julra for exalted gear. Not to “go do monoliths and get gear and come back to stomp her.” Her mechanics hurt. I had to learn them to be able to kill her, which is fine, but it cost keys to attempt, and death meant needing another key at a point in the game where I didn’t have 100’s from end game.
It was frustrating. I didn’t have the power of hindsight. I didn’t even know monoliths were an option at this point in the game (at the time), and neither does any brand new player.
I’m worried that I’m being misunderstood. Dying is fine, dying is a part of the learning process, I never said it wasn’t. Monolith bosses can be retried until you beat them. No matter how many deaths, you are never required to regrind the stability to challenge them again, until you beat them. A dungeon costs 1 key per death, which isn’t a problem at end game, but no new player knows this information when they first encounter the ability to enter a dungeon.
There is no conceivable reason why its good for new players to be punished as harshly for being new. Death IS a punishment. After you’ve learned the boss, needing to restart the whole dungeon and spend another key is FINE as a punishment, because it’s really your fault at that point. When you’re new, it actively discourages you from trying to learn, and encourages you to subvert by outscaling.
You actually used to always lose stability when dying to a boss. It was changed, but it seems there are still some situations where you will lose a very small amount when you die.
Well… I would say the game did give you a perfect lesson then, didn’t it?
‘Should I push on with this right now and risk my few keys or get upgrades first and come back later?’
Which is kinda normal for a game to propose to you through mechanics.
Can’t do something? See if something else is open and come back to it later. Want to really beat it? Keep at it. Your choice. Why do you need hand-holding to bring you away from something which clearly shows you it’s fairly hard still when there’s other things available to try out and see how you fare?
They know it after Key Nr. 1. If they proceed to try with Key Nr. 2… 3… without making visible progress then latest then I would get the gears in my head working to see if I can do something to make the experience easier to get through? Unless I’m hell-bound to doing it, which… would be me since I’m stubborn in that sense, but I’m not the norm and I know full well what I do to myself in that regard and when to give up and try something else instead before I become frustrated.
Some miniscule personal management of your mental state can be expected… there’s games out there hand-holding you from start to end and then there’s games out there which intentionally and even by design get you killed without ever being able to avoid the situation reasonably, often enforcing you to re-do a good chunk of progress because of that (welcome FromSoftware with their Souls-series).
Yes, perfect! Does the job well.
Since you’re only supposed to start handling that content after baseline monolith progression - at which point you’ll have a decent amount of keys as well as the gear to handle it in the first place - it’s perfect to divert you away from it.
If you try it beforehand you learn that it does.
If you keep on trying repeatedly before having substantial upgrades you’re personally setting yourself up for failure.
T1 is really… reaaaally easy to handle for any level 80+ character, and by that time it starts to become relevant. Beforehand it simply slaps your wrist and tells you ‘nope, try later’.
It’s not hand holding to let you refight a boss in T1, or to add an option to fight a version of the boss that drops no loot for fun/practice. Is the game holding your hand when it lets you just refight a monolith boss until you win?
And lets be clear, T1 isn’t hard. Not being familiar with the mechanics, and getting one shot by Julras big explosion at the start, isn’t the game showing you its hard, its punishing you for not knowing, which is FINE. It’s the added punishment of needed another key for that lesson that makes it feel bad.
Ok, so just so we’re clear, you agree with me then. Souls nailed it. Die, retry. Learn. Improve. There is nothing standing in between you and trying again, and the only punishment is death.
You are punished for not knowing, by having to try again. This is completely fine. you’re bringing this up like a counter point to something I didn’t say.
I will say it one more time. For a NEW player, trying to learn a dungeon bosses mechanics is not fun, because unlike monolith bosses, if you die, you need another key to try again. It is the same thing as requiring you to grind 400 some stability, every time you die to a monolith boss, to try again. It wouldn’t be fun. There is a reason that ISN’T how it works, and it isn’t hand holding that you aren’t bent over like that.
T1 dungeon are not hard. The dungeon bosses aren’t hard. They are punishing if you don’t know the mechanics, which is not a problem, just like it isn’t a problem for monolith bosses.
Fromsoft games aren’t good because they are punishingly difficult, they are good because they are well designed and fun, and they make you WANT to try again when you fail. If Elden Ring made you pay a rune toll to enter a boss fog every time you died, it would be significantly less fun to learn a boss. I mean, yeah technically you pay a toll by dropping your runes, but that’s not the same as an actual toll to enter the fight.
Yes, because you go into it to remove the risk of failure by training until you have no chance left of it.
A learning experience generally comes from a negative experience, in general. ‘I can’t do something so I have to get better’ which then leads to you overcoming that obstacle, which gives you mentally a nice reward.
In this case the cost for an attempt is a key and the reward is what the respective dungeon provides you as outcome. Be it the boss unique you want or the reward itself.
By the same logic Lightless Arbor should provide you up-front with the mechanic that you’ll need to put in tons and tons of gold to get something nice. No dungeon provides you that, it simply shows you at the end.
Anything behind testing of your personal assets - hence the build - is not something a game should generally implement. Unless that game focuses on really really sweaty try-hard mechanics which are hard to beat even with extensive knowledge (which LE doesn’t) and hence lets you train beforehand without a risk for any sort of loss to afterwards overcome it when something’s actually on the line.
The game just doesn’t warrant it.
Souls does also drop enemies on top of your head when you can’t expect them to be there. Burns you with a sudden wall of fire out of nowhere, traps you in one-way directions and much more.
It plays with you as much as you play the game. Those things generally don’t feel good.
It’s the exact same thing which Kaizo-Mario did with the invisible blocks you can’t know even exist somewhere. You’re bound to fail, nigh guaranteed even.
The same happens with Julra. Go in first… her explosion demolishes you. ‘Ah, what happened there? Hrmm… ah! I should’ve switched timelines.’
Next she makes a puddle underneath you when you switch timelines, that one is deadly. ‘Oh, what was that? Ok, so she makes a DoT, when she comes into my time I need to get the heck out of it right away!’
Then you go in again and Julra starts her lasers, which likely will demolish you ‘Hrmm… what should I have done? Ah, it had space to move in around the middle, that’s where I should solely move, nowhere else!’
Then there’s her general attacks which aren’t dangerous. But the totems can mess with you ‘Oh no, I can’t damage them in this timeline! What should I do? Ah… yes… I need to kill them before switching timelines or swiftly change back!’
So generally the game sets you up thrice to fail, 3 keys total, which you’ll likely get as you progress towards empowered monoliths. The other bosses do as well.
So it’s an investment to get a great outcome very very similar to the Souls-games. You’re repeatedly setup for failure at spaces and enforces you to re-do it. Simple as that, exact same mechanic. Friction to overcome.
So why should it be changed here when it’s fine in many many other places? That was what I was going for.
For a new player getting a enemy drop on your head in Dark Souls isn’t fun either. For a new player getting to know the UI of Dwarf Fortress isn’t fun either. For a new player…
That’s called learning curve. There’s a different learning curve for every game out there, some have a steeper one, some have a lower one.
You can lower the curve with great design without affecting gameplay in some aspects, other’s though are integral to the design.
The key usage is integral to the design of dungeons, period. They’re a hardcore mechanic in a softcore environment, similar to the Labyrinth in Path of Exile.
Nah, I don’t need roughly 5-8 hours to get another key. Not even remotely.
That’s hyperbole.
The mechanic of the dungeons is more punishing then the timeline bosses.
Why EHG removed stability-loss upon death during a boss encounter is something which baffles be a bit, that is a decision which shouldn’t have been made in the first place. But before that it stayed the same that you had to do another monolith between every 2 tries commonly.
Yes, because one caters to more casual players not being interfered with in their general gameplay - which entails monoliths and monoliths alone for the moment.
In comparison the dungeons are the mechanics which cater to more dedicated people and provide outcomes which are either aspirational (Legendary equipment) or resource sinks a casual player can’t use in the first place.
And Soulfire Bastion has no use in the upper tiers anyway outside of the boss uniques.
Yes, because they make it entirely clear that you as a player made a mistake. They showcase you that you’ve messed up and you can 100% see that there’s ways to handle them.
Well… most of them at least, some are just mechanically frustrating in having either barely opening or huge AoE attacks without properly showcasing that the boss is doing them.
Julra has a single major mechanic to learn, which is time-shifting. And a small arena. That’s all the fight is.
People complain about Julra all the time in 100 different ways.
As a melee you can’t kill her!
As a summoner you can’t kill her!
I can’t kill her without defenses!
The puddle can’t be avoided!
All of those have options to either avoid or handle. The puddle can be entirely avoided by simply shifting back after the AoE explosion before julra follows. The summoners just have a longer fighting time, the melee characters need to pull her out of the middle rather then brainlessly jumping in, the ones without defense are at fault for not having defense.
It’s not a mechanically taxing fight, it’s just memorization of what she does.
There is no reduction warranted, it’s not a hard boss as you said, it’s just one you gotta learn. In an environment not catering to casuals, with an outcome also not catering to casuals.
It’s well positioned.
So by the same logic, Fromsoft holds your hand because you can just keep retrying bosses until you get good enough to win.
If thats your stance, the term loses its meaning.
Dying is a negative experience. Dying is THE negative experience. Being “more punished” for being new, doesn’t make it “more rewarding” in the end. It makes you want to stop trying to learn. If I did a quiz to test my knowledge, but I get slapped every time I answer wrong, I wouldn’t do the stupid quiz. I don’t need to do it.
If you’re running around not expecting enemies around corners after the first couple, thats your fault. Once you realize it happens, it stops being an issue. Wild to compare the two games too.
Yes. There is no problem here.
Ok, so imagine this. The same thing, but it cost 1 key. But only if you’re doing T1.
We’re both speaking the same language. Having more than one life in a T1, doesn’t remove the punishment inherent to dying and having to start the fight all over again. Especially so in T2-4.
Ok, let me rephrase this how I meant it. “Dying is already a punishment. When you are new to something, being further punished on top of death, by say, needing to get another random drop consumable item to keep trying to learn, it makes you feel like an idiot for not already knowing everything, In a way that dissuades you from trying to learn.”
Fair play if thats not how it make you feel, but thats generally how it feels.
So adding a way for players to fight just the bosses alone, with no reward would take away the integral design of the dungeon? The ONLY difficulty they offer is when you’ve never fought them before, because you have no idea what they do. And they aren’t complex enough to offer any challenge, or satisfaction, to learning them.
This isn’t Elden RIng, you don’t get any internet points for beating Julra on t4, like you do with the dlc’s end boss or Malenia. So if you could learn the bosses without flushing some keys down the toilet, its not like anyone would be deprived of some incredible experience. “Well i beat T4 Julra before they let you fight her for fun. So you didn’t really beat her”
This isn’t a matter of “making dungeons too easy by letting people learn without spitting in their mouths for being dirty new players”
It most certainly does not take 5-8 hours to get 400 stability. Thats hyperbole.
Losing the stability it requires to challenge a monolith boss, when you die to it is functionally the exact same as needing to get another key when you die in a dungeon, and you can get both within about an hour. You can even stockpile both of them before trying again.
EHG removed it, because theres a fundamental difference between “feels bad” and “makes you want to stop playing”
It isn’t catering to casuals, to not disrespect peoples time. If you feel otherwise, your in a minority. And if dungeon are catering to “more dedicated people” I’d like to return my gift. They are boring. They aren’t a challenge. Getting disconnected in one is frustratingly common. They are all the same. Put it back in the oven because this slop is undercooked!
How many T1 dungeons do you ever do? How many of them are you out scaling so much that the number of lives you have matters to you in any way? If they gave people 3 lives in a T1, you wouldn’t be affected in literally any way, and if you say you would be, perhaps you need to calm down a little.
Neither you, nor I, would be affected in any negative way if they added a way to fight dungeon bosses for fun, for no rewards. And frankly the same is true if T1 had infinite lives. No one’s experience is enhanced without it, and no ones experience would be hindered with it.
Only the major bosses - similar to timeline bosses - which are core to progression itself are put right at a bonfire/grace. This is ingenious game-design. Side bosses often enforce you to traverse through a substantial amount of area before even facing them, and - which is a downside in my eyes since it’s a un-needed accessibility feature they implemented - statues of marrika (if I wrote it right) are also a way to keep respawning.
That means outside of Elden Ring - and even there partially - a large portion of bosses have the same mechanic as dungeons in Last Epoch, meaning you have to take time, you have to survive it (which doesn’t even use up resources in LE in comparison to the Souls games) and then tackle the boss after just to be set back.
So yes, for the type of positioning EHG has done with their dungeons it has absolutely meaning.
Given that there’s a tangible outcome which commonly is superior to the usual content as well limiting access also is a good game design as otherwise the drop-rate would’ve needed to be reduced vastly, or the outcome for Legendary Potential even more then the RNG playfield it is now… like downgrading items or outright failing to do anything, both feeling ‘bad’ by design though.
What does that even mean?
Obviously a new player will die more then a experienced player!
The whole notion of removing that aspect is not even something to be talked about. It’s not a repair-cost like World of Warcraft had which solely was a downside for inexperienced players while experienced ones didn’t even have to deal with it.
Failing and hence death is the general hurdle to overcome for the whole game, that’s the core which even makes it a game.
If you stop trying to learn because of the option to fail then I don’t even know what to tell you… you’ve failed at life in that case.
Also your example doesn’t even relate to the situation, it’s a false equivalency.
In some learning institutions you get for example 3 tries total before being barred from it. That’s a viable equivalency since you also have limited tries in LE. So you better simply make sure to make the best of those tries rather then throwing yourself blindly at them. Do everything to succeed, hence learn.
If you don’t you fail by default, simple as that.
Nono, I’m talking about… literally… dropping enemies at your head. The DLC of Elden Ring has that inside, you exit a door without ability to look up and a huge enemy drops right onto you.
There’s enemies which are invisible.
There are enemies which blend into the environment.
There are enemies which get triggered to move by passing specific areas and not being visible before.
All of that are similar mechanics… you can’t foresee a big chunk of that stuff.
It’s designed to not be foreseen even when you try to move carefully.
That’s the point of it.
Which is the case already.
The puddle doesn’t kill you.
You got generally enough time to leave the lasers.
The totems don’t do much damage.
What more do you need hence?
That’s why T1 exists, her stuff outside of the insta-kill does so little damage there that you can do it with any character without proper equipment even.
More lifes?
Maybe even respawn you right on place?
Why not make you invulnerable during the whole fight right away?
Where does it stop?
It’s a spectrum we’re talking about here, you’re asking to make something which already is - plainly spoken - piss easy to do… from a new player’s perspective (because I still remember playing Last Epoch that far for the first time when legendary items were introduced and killing her first-try in T1 and T2 with less keys dropped back then).
Sure, I’m an experienced diablo-clone player so I generally pick up stuff in the genre quickly. You can’t expect that to happen from someone totally new in the genre. Absolutely right, to take it out of your mouth before it comes even as an argument.
But then what? Not teach those players to properly decide on which content to tackle and let them rush head-first into the corruption wall where they outpace their build only to complain ‘stuff is too hard!’ by then?
Not have the need for them to basically ‘git gud’ which just means build up some experience and skill for the genre to do stuff?
You’re going dangerously towards becoming an auto-battler since if you reduce the need to actively handle things down further and further you can literally just have it fight automatically since there’s no meaning to even interfere with random skill spamming until the boss falls down… given the gear is not utterly and entirely atrocious.
No? It isn’t?
Do you loose XP?
Do you loose gear?
What’s the consequence?
Death in a game is not a downside unless one is designed into it. That’s why deaths during the campaign at bosses have no meaning, there is no punishment.
Dungeons are designed to have a tangible punishment similar to how monoliths have one… a miniscule one, removal of the stability reward and monolith reward. It hampers progression there. In the dungeons it removes your access ability simply until re-acquired. There is no other downside there.
You see… failing is normal, it’s the baseline thing one does. You fail until you get good enough not to.
There’s even tangible progress visible. ‘Got her down to 80% this time’ then ‘Got her down to 60% this time’ and so on and so forth. That’s your progress.
If you stop despite having progress… sorry to say but that’s a ‘you’ thing in general.
Yes, absolutely!
The bosses provide a tangible reward and hence are a obstacle to overcome.
If you can simply go and train without actually facing it then you don’t overcome it, you just throw yourself against the wall until you finally can do it and then make your success rate 100%.
Why not just go into it right to the boss? No need to have the time investment before then either, just kill the boss, gain the reward, done!
Those are all design choices with a reason.
The loss of access enforces a player to make a informed decision to weight of the value of the access is worth the try to overcome the obstacles. If you know already you can overcome it… what weight is behind that decision? That’s gone.
If you remove the areas before it removes the time investment needed, which is for example done to make sure you can’t run it back to back and get tens or hundreds of legendaries in a hour. It’s a limiter to enforce putting time into it. Boring now and in need of work… but the function is there for a reason.
So yes, yes it absolutely would.
Sorry to burst a bubble but the vast minority does it for bragging rights. Nigh nobody gives a shit about such things. It’s personally overcoming something and hence deriving enjoyment from having overcome said challenge.
It’s actually the common way to handle challenges, you put something at stake for it, the other way simply is rare because the situation itself creates a endorphins as well as dopamine.
Luck-based things commonly cause only dopamine to be released.
Going through stress and/or pain is the main reason when endorphins are released.
That’s why overcoming a challenge with something on the line is better for the long-term engagement in a video game… or in general actually.
And that’s also why gambling is inducing addiction since you get a dopamine rush and dopamine alone causes your brain to become numb to it, so you need more and more, only by handling all your ‘happy hormones’ properly through the different channels (we don’t get serotonin or oxytocin through video games for example) makes you enjoy things properly.
If there’s no risk attached and hence the stress level is low the endorphin release is hampered, leading to a low spike in dopamine and nothing else. Since neither risk is there nor the need to put in a high amount of effort the spike is very very low which leads to barely any enjoyment derived from the outcome. ‘Ah yes, got it… ok, let’s move on then’ and it’s over.
This is why games do what they do. Like making something suddenly hard. Like making you frustrated intentionally to overcome afterwards as you know something happens. Like giving you a sudden surprising great reward once in a while. Like throwing you in a sudden tense situation (like the Harbinger spawn after beating the boss in your first level 90 timeline).
All of those work together to increase your enjoyment… which increases your player retention in a healthy way (addiction is the unhealthy one) and hence keeps the game existing.
This is why for example Last Epoch has no chance to ever have the player retention which PoE showcases unless they go into the same direction with the sheer variety and mass of content giving you those types of rewards which are always ‘new’ to the brain hence since they’re so varied. And this is also why D3 is so casual heavy… which means there’s very very few core players to play on for more then 1-2 weeks.
So yes, this isn’t Elden Ring… but it is a game which enforces you to overcome those uncomfortable feelings to a higher degree then D3 to derive enjoyment from it and hence stay longer-term.
If you can’t do that and your capacity to sustain those negative feelings before the rewards kick in then that content isn’t for you, which means end-game isn’t for you since it takes excessive amounts of time and effort to overcome the gear progression… which means you’re not a long-term player but it’s better to move on as soon as you reach the respective point for that and come back later when adjustments happened which might raise that limit for you.
Base corruption increases are limited at +18 without a Gaze. The common corruption increase though is around 8-9 at most when you encounter a Shade node by going straight away from the middle.
That happens after roughly 8-10 monoliths which a mediocre player needs around 3 minutes each. So let’s go with 9 monoliths for the middle, hence a total of 27 minutes per shade.
Having no Harbinger effect on a timeline we don’t get the newly implemented double and will roughly get 1 and at most 2 gazes per ‘run’. A gaze gives you a +12 bonus corruption, flat. Max you can use up to 4 gazes.
With glyphs of envy we’ll likely see ~2 per ‘run’ as well, which is somewhere around 400 stability, or 0,5 gazes.
So for baseline increase in corruption you’ll get 2,5 gazes per run with let’s say 10 baseline corruption. Hence 40 corruption per ‘run’.
Hence to achieve 300 corruption to reach 400 you need 7,5 runs.
7,5 runs at 25 minutes (I’m lazy to math it out with 27) we get 177,5 minutes… so let’s just say around 3 hours of time investment needed to achieve it.
That’s the ‘mediocre’ player without downtime, without looking at MG, without inventory sorting, without vendor trips for those few poor sods that do, without adjusting equipment… just plain and simple running.
The usual player has over 50% downtime, so we would already get at least 6 hours time investment… but we can simply stay with ‘3’ for convenience sake and utterly ignore those aspects.
So yes, it takes a darn long time, more so for a new player as you try to speak from perspective wise.
If that one makes you want to stop playing then everything’s lost anyway. It was a mechanic which was barely noticeable and a natural limiter to not throw yourself headless into the fray. But well, it was also so miniscule in working that it had no major design reason anyway.
The common gameplay loop of Last Epoch 100% caters to casuals. You don’t have massive pitfalls, you can run loads of stuff mindlessly and unless you push your corruption specifically you won’t run into situations where you repeatedly die over and over again.
In comparison Path of Exile caters to a fairly ‘sweaty’ crows so to say, high attention needed to not get your map mods to mess with you in the first place.
Torchlight Infinite for example has a fully ‘casual’ game-loop for the core end-game play. Unless you actively choose to go out of your way you won’t run into issues there during their ‘maps/monoliths/whatever’.
A few given I use them as the campaign skip. So I’m generally vastly underpowered for them and have to scramble around more then I do with T4 Julra.
And I fail regularly as well and have to re-do them since I’m greedy and do them too early before my character is ready.
WHAT LEAP IN LOGIC?!? It’s LITERALLY the exact same thing! monolith bosses let you retry until you get good enough to win, and you claimed that’s hand holding. And as you just admitted, “Only major bosses - similar to timeline bosses - which are core to progression itself are put right at a bonfire/grace.” if Major bosses are like monolith bosses, and they both allow you to keep retrying ad infinitum, you played yourself! Any Fromsoft game puts you AT MOST 60 seconds away from the boss fog and even if any exceed that rule, all you ever need to do is RUN.
You are fighting ghosts. You’re so latched on to this idea that someone is trying to subvert the feeling of failure in a video game, that you keep arguing against my argument with an argument that isn’t even aimed at me! You’ve also attached the entire notion of failure singularly to the idea that T1 dungeons give you 1 life, and that altering that in anyways would remove failure from it entirely.
You’re trying to turn this into some passive dig at peoples determination in life because people as a rule, don’t willingly choose to engage with negativity unless we have something to gain from it. Dungeons suck. You keep speaking as if something profound would be lost if T1’s had more lives, or players could challenge the bosses for fun.
It’s a video game. Video games are fun, even when you fail, unless you make failure so annoying that people would rather do something else. It’s not giving up after “making tangible progress”, or because “the option to fail” exists, its having enough respect for your own time to say “I would feel more fulfilled doing literally anything else, because this isn’t fun”.
I’ve already explained several times, concrete reasons for my stance in this argument, but all your rebuttals have either glossed over them, or refuted them with something about casuals.
Yes. it is. You have to start a boss at the beginning again if you die before you kill it. that’s a punishment. You don’t walk into a boss fight with the desire to lose and have to start all over. Losing is failure. Failure in itself is punishment.
If you disagree that’s fine. But you’re wrong.
And with that, we’ve hit a dead end. This stopped being productive after the 2nd reply and I don’t feel like reading/writing anymore dissertations. Nothing I say will sway you in any way, and vice versa anyways.
Either way, have a nice day.
Ok I lied, I couldn’t let this one slide. I’m gonna have to stop you right there. Do you know the difference between corruption and stability? Judging by the rest of that quote, no.
