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’.