My question is as follows, do you want puzzle mechanics incorporated into LE.
Few areas puzzles can be applied;
A) boss fights
B) zone access
C) loot or cashes
D) seasonal mechanics
E) achievements
F) dungeon traversal
G) doors in procedural generation echos
My answer is yes I want puzzles in an arpg, my issue is I can’t think of introduction puzzle idea that wouldn’t just be a slow down of players farms which I believe would make this idea DOA(dead on arrival).
I hate puzzles in ARPGs. One good example of why I hate them is the puzzle games in boss fights in PoE 1/2. I don’t want to memorize stuff to know where I’m supposed to be dodging next. Or have to figure out that the stuff that pops on the floor, of which my first instinct is to avoid because it will blow up or something, should be walked over before a certain timer.
Introducing a puzzle in an ARPG just means that rather than learn a fight intuitively you have to learn by dying with trial and error (“Oh, when he does the slam, I should have pulled the blue lever”). Or, what ends up happening 99.9999% of the time, by going on youtube and watching the fight first.
Puzzles in ARPGs fit as well as having to open doors. It only slows you down and frustrates players.
Building a build is already a puzzle. Plus the dungeon zones are basically puzzles. Fun to do once or twice… Such things often lack replayability, hence EHG also added Portal charms to skip them.
That should be enough.
Oh and we got item Tetris in inventory and Idols/Altars.
Jokes aside, it might be ok to have puzzles in seasonal mechanics (not going core please). Like the Vaal-Temple. Personally not a fan of, but I see it could be appealing to some players.
Not a fan of puzzles in ARPGs, I avoid them whenever I can. I’d rather EHG just focus on the basics at this point. They have much work to do without adding puzzles into the game. Just my opinion.
I get what everyone is saying, I’m just on the side of just adding more boss hp/def/dmg doesn’t make added difficulty. And I would like to see something besides an extra zero added to boss stats or a x10(stat) between normal and hard mode stuff.
If you wanna take a stretch in looking at the word puzzle. You could call Ubers immune stage a “puzzle”. A puzzle less in the sense of unjumble these letters and find the password and more so boss fight elements that require at least a little bit of player attention and movement. And less of an either make me unkillable and just hold lmb until the fights over. Or stack this on that and then stack this and bam 1shot no boss fight.
It really does depend on what you call a puzzle. For example, in D2 to kill Diablo you have to break the 5 seals and kill the 5 bosses before he spawns. Do you consider that a puzzle? I think of it more as a checklist.
I have no issues with something like that, as long as it’s not too obstrusive and doesn’t force you to keep going back and forth over empty areas. Or make you fail if you don’t make it in x time.
But if you’re talking about something like a logic puzzle where, for example, you have 8 torches in a circle, some are lit and some aren’t and clicking one reverses itself and its neighbours, then I don’t like that in an ARPG.
I love puzzle games, but only where they’re thematically fitting. Either in a dedicated puzzle game or in something like Tomb Raider where you get soft puzzles.
I especially dislike if you get puzzles that require dexterity/timing to solve. Those are often very frustrating, even in games that are fitting (like some in Tomb Raider), where it just leads you to die over and over again until you hit the perfect timing 10 times in a row.
It’s the same way I feel about QTEs, tbh.
I use the word puzzle as it’s a blanket for a lot of different possible takes. End of the day I just want more to do in the game besides run and smack things. After 4K h’s+ played in LE I just need more variety in the grind.
If I had to rephrase the question to a suggestion it would probably go like “hey I would like more features not related to damage to (significant) boss fights”.
You can look at boss ward introductions as a way to try and prevent one shotting boss’s. As a way to close the play gap between cannons and tanks. All I found boss ward does is close out certain builds from going past specific points. I personally would like boss ward to only work if the boss has received (x) total damage over (y) time or a per hit damage limit enabling the boss ward one shotting boss’s check. As personally I find boss ward as just indirect boss hp as the natural degen of boss ward isn’t enough to not “hurt” “bad builds”. This is a whole different concern and topic though.
PoE did this well enough. What we need are more interactive mechanics, like Delve (which I don’t like) or Betrayal (which I find meh) or Trial of the Ancestors (which I actually found was pretty fun and felt it could have gone core). Basically things where you get to have decision making involved prior to going in and smacking things. And where you see progression happening outside of smacking things.
Boss ward wasn’t really well thought out. It was meant to replace the boss DR to prevent one shots and give low DPS builds a little more balance, but it ended up doing the opposite, exactly because, as you pointed out, the decay isn’t enough.
Even with a higher decay it wouldn’t be enough. There was a big discussion at the time and I came up with an idea of making the ward thresholds themselves decay over time. So if you have a slow build and you’re taking some time to reach the first ward threshold, it will just decay and not trigger.
This would mean that a high DPS build would have to go through all the HP+ward of a boss, while a low DPS build would only have to go through the HP, thus balancing them a little more and still preventing one shots (by increasing the ward value more and increasing the decay as well).
No to puzzles. Boss mechanics are exactly that you shouldn’t need to play Simon says with a boss like Maven in Poe1 it’s just kinda weird.
LE needs a lot more other things but definitely not puzzles.
NO! esp ones that require timing. Or having to memorize. I think it would interfere with the flow of the game. I agree with more then one poster about this isnt the game for puzzles. To me an arpg is about running through the campaign without any major hold ups. I know Im wierd & not the majority. I like running through campaigns & im not about end games. End games I usually find boring. Im hoping they do finish this story w/o puzzles. I do believe they should make it so others can skip campaign if they want after running through it once.
If I want a puzzle game I play a puzzle game. If I want to play a jump & run I play a jump & run. If I want to play a H&S I play a H&S. I hate mixing stuff up because it’s A half baked or B just a slog.
if I want to breake my pace because I overplayed a game I just play something else. mixing genres that force me to do them drive me away from games. For example all the jumping puzzles in GW2 was something I hated dearly and give nthe fact you get achivements and stuff from it I hated it even more.
I have 0 reasons to touch LE right now because it’s meh to my taste. Adding puzzles would simply distance myself more from LE.
It doesn’t have to be the typical logic style puzzle. It could be something like phases that require you to do a specific amount of damage during a phase or an attack pattern that’s like a ddr game where you have to press your attack buttons in a timed sequence or it could be a “puzzle” of different dots on the ground with different colours and depending on the colour your on could give a buff or debuff or damage. Like a poison poll that’s green or a reduced spell damage pool or a increased cooldown recovery pool that’s red.
I think the initial choice of the word “puzzle” may have been an incorrect choice. End of the day stat stacking and just making things take more damage or do more damage can only carry a game so far. And IMHO if that’s what u want to build game around then really lean into it and stop nerfing stuff and allow players to go crazy with crazy gear to match the mob stat changes.
I remember the time when EHG added ward to bosses. If you add an even more onboxious system that makes everything worse with stuff I quoted I’m even more against it. IF EHG is setting up skills to kill a boss in 2 seconds I don’t want to be forced to play a minigame that makes the fight a minutes long slog.
EHG could simply add mechanics that need you to use your brain so you can’t brute force an enemy and you need some timing or to destroy boss adds in a certain pattern to destroy a invul shield or whatnot. But making mechanics that needs my toon to dance it’s name because resons… nah thx.
Same goes for stupid immunity timers for no reason… sucks the fun out of a game for me. If those are reasonable or something I can do something about I’m fine. Immunity timers for the sake of immunity timers are as obnoxious to me personaly as puzzles for the sake of puzzles.
I’m always for mechanics that make me use my brain insted of only fearing oneshots at a certain point when enemies are so OP I can’t beat them anymore. But if I can stay behind a rock that makes the boss lose line of sight so I’m not oneshot is a valid mechanic in my book just to throw a minimalist mechanic in the room.
Or if a boss spawns enemies that heal it for the dmg they do to you so you have a well thought out build that deals enough single target and AoE dmg (at least in a well balanced game) and interact with different stuff.
All of this isn’t killing the possibility to kill a boss fast enough to not struggle trhough a fight that is meaningless because you can’t fail even if you try so to speak.
I hope you get my drift. I’m not against meaningfull mechanics that might be identified as “puzzles” but I want them to be NOT hampering the flow of the game. As I said when I want a breake of pace I simply play a different game or genre.
This is why the original post had the final bit. As I have gathered most arpg players generally want brain dead wac-a-mole running sim with loot. And anything that has any negative impact on loot and specifically speed farming boss loot(let’s be real that’s main player issue with most changes is the impact on loot and loot acquisition rate). Followed by the why “waste time” on (x) when (y) is so more important (to the complaining party).
Plenty of MMO’s out there with puzzles man - The Secret World has a very complex one where you need to read things, put clues together and work them out, you should try that 
I’m working on 100% crimson desert atm, it’s my go to game now when I shut off my brain. I eat some things turn on pc and stream it to stream deck. I can spend an hour doing nothing and not notice then spend the next hour trying to figure out where my next chase is and figuring out how to get it where it is and what I have to do to get it.
I do play other games just not other arpgs(anymore), LE is the only game I post about as I feel it’s the only game I like both the game and the dev’s with devs that actually engage the community.
Secret World was my fav for ages but player based lacked too hard all the sci fi type mmo’s that I’ve tried never seem to take off which sucks! Haven’t tried Crimson Desert yet - assume from comment you enjoy it?
You would be correct, I wouldn’t recommend if you don’t like games where the main story/campaign takes a back seat to doing anything besides the story.