Even if it does achieve what you are saying, and I disagree that it does, it does it in a very unsatisfying way. It’s not organic or enjoyable at all. It’s just an obvious, immersion-breaking speed bump.
Of course that is just my opinion and I’m not speaking for everyone. I did ask, in this thread, “does anyone enjoy this?”, and no one raised their hand.
Yeah, you’re fine to feel that way. 90% of this thread is everyone agreeing that the current implementation does not work the way the devs hoped it would and how to fix it vs removing it entirely.
Balanceing is always on on going thing.
However the game was in EA for 5 yrs with plenty of players pointing out the Balance issues with the game for yrs. As well as plenty of time to get the game properly balanced out
Look how long it took EHG to truly realize player ward was broken and OP AF. Players pointed thag out for YEARS while it was in EA. And now what in 1.1 they address that issue. That should habe been dealt with long before 1.0 ever happened
1k+ not being intended and EHG saying we messed up somewhere if builds get that far. Should have been a balance standard yrs ago. Not something that was a line drawn after full release.
Had EHG done proper balancing as well as had a soild stance on where they want balance to be
DDR/ward wouldnt be needed at all had proper balancing been done over the course of EA and post 1.0 launch. This is a big point @Kulze is trying to make
DDR/ward is nothing more than a band-aid fix for balancing. Its not designed to be anything except slow high dps builds down. Also shows thay EHG either cant balance thier game or doesnt know how to balance it.
With proper balancing DDR and ward mechanic becomes redundant.
By that time they’ve already showcased their abilities.
As mentioned, if you utterly remove the aspect of the possibility of progression for a boss-fight… why do it again anyway? It feels like shit. Always does, even for the most hardcore defender of ‘I want my bosses to give me a proper fight’ which I’m fully agreeing with even!
It’s what comes beyond that. A player kills Aberroth the first time… but the second time they might have better equipment, that should show. Diablo-clones are about gear. If your gear is worthless to affect a fight, what are you gearing for? So if you beat a boss already but better gear doesn’t do anything… why would you farm for more?
The numbers go brrr… effects basically end the moment there is no difference able to be perceived anymore. Killing the boss in 1 seconds or 1,05 seconds? We can’t discern between them mentally, it doesn’t matter for us. The higher the difference is the more impact it has.
You’re absolutely right that it pulls in people easier for the first time, but the whole premise afterwards is basically a trick which our brain commonly doesn’t like a lot. Progress… overcoming difficulty… reward for effort in any way is what games are for, that’s their main thriving force, no matter the genre. The only further thing keeping someone in is curiosity, and that’s mostly for story or for being able to experience content you haven’t experienced yet, curiosity is gone the second you do, now you know… hence no curiosity.
So, if you create the systems with the philosophy you’re declaring then this leads to a high amount of influx for players but a very bad retention after beating the content. And since the progression itself in LE has some major ‘hiccups’ still this means you got neither something for the long-term players nor for the more casual players available fully, neither is happy.
We can also see that with the changes. Pre 1.1 LE catered a good chunk for casual players, they weren’t affected by DR, after all DR doesn’t trigger when you do too little damage, or triggers in a non-substantial way. Overcoming the challenge is not too hard. It pissed off long-term players though (understandably) because their efforts in making their character very strong showcased barely any changes to the boss fights… unless they could burst the bosses down heavily before DR triggered in the first place.
Then 1.1 came around and now it caters to longer-term players, which means it got substantially harder for the more casual builds and players as their setups are in no way ‘optimal’. They got basically HP and time to survive stacked onto the former situation.
But long-term is also fairly wonky as you hit a progression wall in terms of gear and power surprisingly early, which comes back to itemization. So those players will easily decide that other games of the genre allow them to get psychological rewards more regularly, hence it caters only to a (very) specific clientele which has no issues with rewards being spread out extremely far but being substantial at times then at least.
So my question is: Who does the game try to cater to?
Because I see a myriad of different mechanics all targeted to different types of players but with no cohesion at all, and it getting worse rather then better.
If EHG wants to cater to a wide variety, which includes both short-term and long-term players then each singular mechanic along the line needs to uphold the design limitations to ensure they can enjoy it. Instead we have a mixture of ‘This mechanic sucks for short-term player… but this one sucks for long-term players’ and there’s no red thread through them. It’s all frayed out endings with no connection.
Massively so even. And even back then it was mostly about the meta. Meta is not about viability or fun, meta exists always, in the case of LE we can say that’s things like Static Orb this cycle, which is fine to exist. No big issue.
Exactly, I put it as a extremely negative thing that EHG is far far too stubborn to look into explanations of concepts, it feels like they stumble around in the dark solely going by gut-feel.
And don’t get me wrong, gut-feel is a very good thing which can help you avoid many downfalls, and for some people it even works out relatively well long-term… but it’s a pure gamble as you have no knowledge on why this feeling happens, you just go the direction it tells you without any actual explanation as to why you do it.
Informed decisions are harder to make, take a lot more effort but are also long-term vastly more reliable and have a better return. And I don’t think EHG knows a lot, but they got good intuition to make it that far.
Exactly.
We can’t excuse the devs for it being ‘a new thing’ given it had been a mandatory aspect which had to be done before 1.0.
Wasn’t though.
Much like Factions weren’t properly worked out before in depth but rushed.
Or the campaign not being finished (not left open for future expansions… I mean storyline finished).
Those are the ‘no-go’ things for a developer and EHG did them. Their game overall is good though so we push it to the side and give the benefit of the doubt. But… that only holds ‘so long’.
It does show, when the boss dies faster and you are better at the mechanics? Literally both systems allow players to kill bosses faster with higher dps. That’s never been in question.
If killing a boss once is all that matters, then they should just replace bosses with a chest for you to open once you kill it once? Right? Since you’ve seen it once and the Loot is all that matters, just remove the boss after it’s killed on your account.
DR did in a vastly smaller way then Boss Ward definitely. Until you had enough alpha damage to burst the boss down before it activated.
I personally have to say that I didn’t feel much difference between my characters with DR, if I did low damage and was barely affected, I did my 2-3%.
When I got there with a stronger character and immediately burst it down 30% then suddenly once more… afterwards I had my 2-3%
It felt like there was barely any difference.
The only difference was with my strong character, the Wraithlord, since that’s a fairly broken one.
I came in, burst it down by 90%… well… then there’s not much left, I don’t care about it then much, do I?
This was obviously not something someone liked with much damage… but it made it easier for the more casual players, for boss-fights they were on a vastly more even level.
The current system goes the opposite route with Boss-Ward. As a casual player I’ll not be able to kill the boss. I don’t have the skill, I need to survive vastly longer. Though… it caters very well to improving gear! Which now works in favor of the longer playing people since they go ahead and out-farm bosses to make up for skill matters for example.
Which is why I’m asking: Who does the game try to cater to?
They switched their stance for who’s affected most basically in a 180.
Don’t be dumb, I explained my stance above and that doesn’t represent my stance in the least.
I went into detail, do I need to write 5 paragraphs to go into detail again?
Read above, you got your answers on my stance, ask specifically about it if you’ve missed, misunderstood something or simply were too lazy to read. I’m stopping to repeat myself that much, it’s a waste of time for me.
I mostly already gave my feedback and don’t really feel like continuing the discussion is a good use of my time, but I had to comment on this:
You’re finally going to start writing smaller posts? 
He has! … and suddenly I feel like I need to fill that void. Sit awhile, and listen!
i made me laugh
But the stance is “why shouldn’t we be able to one shot bosses, that’s the power fantasy of Diablo-clones.” at which point I have to ask the, admittedly exaggerated, question of “and how is clicking on a boss once for loot different from clicking on a chest once for the same loot?”
y 
I’ll fix the sentence and hope that suffices:
“Why shouldn’t we be able to advance until we can one-shot bosses, that’s the power fantasy of Diablo-clones.”
Advance towards it, the core aspect. Not start out with it.
That’s why I said: “Kill the boss once, and then replace it with the model of a chest”. Since you now have the power fantasy of clicking on the boss and it dropping the loot you want, what’s the difference between the model being a boss with a dying animation and a chest with an opening animation?
I’m being facetious here, but I hope you see why people actually want to fight bosses with this. Progressing to the point that the boss is able to be replaced with a chest isn’t fun. Being able to go back and walk through areas that gave you trouble, including those bosses, is. But those areas don’t drop loot that can make you stronger, bosses at your current level can.
Where’s the progress there?
That’s the same concept behind it. A fight has 2 aspects: Overcoming the battle itself (which is a reward) and the actual ‘reward’ (which is the loot, or blessing, or whatever).
Both are mandatory.
That means progressing in how well you can deal with a fight for the aspect of ‘overcoming’ as well as getting proper rewards according to the difficulty of the ‘overcome’ content, in that case the boss fight.
100% to 0% allows no progress, you’re always at the same stage. That’s crap design. You struggle first… then you struggle less… and by time 10 you could simply put a chest inside and it’s fine. You’ve 100% ‘overcome’ that challenge. There is nothing more to do. And even then… some people try to push the number from a 1 second fight down to a blip of a few milliseconds.
That’s all progression, and the more meaningful it’s displayed the better it is for the player.
Had you finished reading my comment you would have seen that I covered that.
I also admitted that my example is an intentional exaggeration to prove a point.
If the boss is relevant content (i.e. Dropping gear that can be an improvement to what you’re currently using) then in no way should that boss become a 5s or less kill. That’s not a boss, that’s a regular enemy. And if all you (general you, not you specifically) care about is getting the Loot as fast as possible (which two people other than you in this thread actively admitted that’s what they care about), then there’s no difference between having a chest with loot and having a boss that dies in 1s.
Having progress is great, show the boss becoming easier as your gear and your understanding of the mechanics improve, but let the boss continue being a real fight with actual mechanics as long as the gear it drops is relevant to you. Being able to kill a 100c boss in a second or two when you’re normally capable of farming 300c is fine, the gear dropped from 100c isn’t going to be that beneficial to you specifically (though someone in the MG may want to farm loot to sell, at which point I say let them farm easier content if they want?). But you should never be farming 300c and one shot a 300c boss.
Boss Ward and Dynamic DR are systems intended for that purpose. Keep the boss from being a glorified treasure chest while allowing improvement to have noticeable reductions in kill time. While also not negatively impacting players who are just getting to the fight and doing lower dps.
Well then RIP LE time to wrap it up. Makes me a bit sad but F this stupid mechanic that ruins the game for me I’m done.
Yes, I do as well 
It’s the primary factor! Just because one reason is the primary one doesn’t mean that all following ones aren’t important.
What?
That whole argument solely applies to shade.
Corruption only affects the drop-rate through item rarity, it doesn’t affect LP chance or which items can drop for anything else.
So… if I solely want to do it for a item… what does hinder me currently to gather envy runes, reduce my corruption to 100 and one-shot the respective boss - which provides me a relevant drop - over and over again?
The corruption system of LE sadly makes this whole argument nonsensical, I would enjoy to be on your side with that but I can’t be since it’s just… sadly not upholding, neither for Boss-Ward nor DR. If EHG wants players to be forced to go through boss mechanics then they have a boatload more to do then either Boss Ward or DR, their whole core concept is failing to uphold that premise after all.
And mind you, I’m still 100% for meaningful fights at meaningful content level. Though a build which handles for example 600 corruption should absolutely and 100% give the boss of a 100c timeline a heart attack by smiling wryly at it. Everything else is just utterly and entirely nonsense to demand in a system like EHG has set up.
If they don’t want those things to happen then they need to abolish this system entirely and re-work it into something else, it’s a unfitting system for those regards by design-choice (sadly so).
Damn, I admit I completely forgot about that haha. I woke up in the middle of the night and was browsing the forums trying to go back to sleep.
So yeah, loot is basically unrelated to the corruption tier, but the intent of my post is still the same. You should never be able to one shot a boss at a relevant tier and if you’re going back to 100c after clearing 600c then sure, you can one shot that boss. The Boss Ward System still allows for this though as it doesn’t scale upwards and the stronger you get the faster you can kill the boss.
That being said, why do people even bother farming high corruption if you can completely kit yourself out at 100c lol. That seems like a counter intuitive design choice. But that’s a topic for a different post.
Yeah, and it’s a really good point to make.
The only problem is it - sadly as said - doesn’t apply to LE because of how they set up their end-game.
And… they do because ‘numbers go brrrr…’ is a strong motivator, a really really strong motivator.
I mean, my ‘lazy game’ for collecting things (my main reason to play diablo-clones) is ‘Siralim Ultimate’, because I also enjoy the old-school JRPG turn-based group battles. You basically get close to everything from the start, you can endlessly improve stuff though so there’s no end. Which made me play on my laptop while traveling a boatload until I reached ‘depth’ 10k, which is several hundred hours after all.
We don’t need a lot to be happy
I think that one of the major strengths of Diablo-clones is how easily they cater to different audiences. But it’s also a weakness.
I, personally, couldn’t care less about infinite power scaling. I’d play more incremental games if I did lol. I want to plan a build and make my way through the campaign (up to three times in some games) to watch my character level up, unlock new skills and find new gear, I might dabble in the endless content if there is any (depending on how much I enjoy that build) before I move onto a new character. Bosses becoming trivial due to my skill build doesn’t feel great when my goal is to progress through the game and fight cool bosses. Even if I have to fight them a bunch.
For example, I’m currently doing an “all Defense/X” challenge in TQ1 where I play every combination of Defense with the other masteries and I’m comparing how well they do against each other. So I’m grinding through the same stretches of campaign and fighting the same bosses back to back 10 times and even then I don’t want any of these bosses to suddenly become a one shot due to the way a skill synergy plays out or because I got God tier drop luck. Thankfully TQ1 is old enough that it’s not a problem when playing through the campaign.
Ultimately, it’s a difference in playstyles and LE seems to want to cater more towards players like me who want boss fights to not be trivialized
Yeah, you’re right with the strength and weakness of the genre itself.
Which makes for a decent variety on the market after all, otherwise we only would have 1 or 2 games which are relevant at any time… and the next one improving on the concept before the former is pushed out or overtakes them again quickly enough.
What I simply think is that EHG doesn’t exactly know who the want to cater to, trying to do it to too many people at once and creating clashing situations because of it.
If they go along and make a clear choice on what their target audience is supposed to be… while adjusting the came accordingly then I personally think not only would the quality of the game rise (me personally enjoying it or not isn’t a matter there) but also that it would reduce the amount of varied complaints which seem mutually exclusive to each other.
Here’s my opinion.
I think EHG is exactly what they said they were - a bunch of folks passionate about ARPGs who wanted to create their own ARPG. And they did!
They created something that they wanted to play, and that attracted folks who liked what they created, who became vocal on the boards, especially about liking what they saw.
So far, a pretty self-selecting group of folks that like the same thing. If you didn’t like it, you quietly left because it’s early access. If you didn’t like it, and you came to the forums, you didn’t find many(any) people who agreed with you, you heard about how it was early access, and you left.
Then they got a lot of attention and now there are a wider variety of voices… and here we are! 
So where are we? We’re with a group of devs that are trying to come up to speed as fast as they can with the fact that they own a successful business, probably adding employees that they are then responsible for, job-wise. A lot of added pressure.
So I wonder how much actually they’ve thought about, ‘what type of audience do we want to support’. I’m sure they have thought a ton about, ‘what type of game do we want to make/play?’. But a group of (now) developers aren’t exactly anyone’s target audience. It seems like a strange position to be in.
In case I don’t say this enough, EHG I’m rooting for you!