Or you can just avoid making big changes on the class/gear system every 3 months and have more time to properly buff or nerf without heavily affecting 1294098 other things that are connected. Like stat stick nerf that changed the fundamental DW mechanic.
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These streamers (including Lizard) are creating a public good with zero transaction costs. I’ve seen Lizard answer questions for hours and hours. The man is very humble, and I hope people aren’t getting confused.
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It’s simple scaling nothing to do with advanced programming but I get your point.
Thanks!
I am very passionated about LE, and sometimes I rant and express myself very viscerally.
Not everyone has to understand me or like me, its ok.
I apologise if it seemed like I was attacking you. As you say we are all very passionate about the game and things can sometimes get heated. I only watched your stream for the first time yesterday and several things you said really rubbed me the wrong way, but perhaps I caught you at a bad time.
I’m sure that the devs will consider the feedback from all sides and will do their best to create a game that’s enjoyable for everyone.
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It ok man, no worries.
Because people are hypocrites. I think content should be gated and not available to everyone no matter the play style. There should be exclusive multiplayer content just as there should be exclusive difficulty content.
I don’t know what will or will not be multiplayer. I was just commenting on people that complain about gated content.
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Finding random plebs to be able to play a game mode is not what I’m interested in. And yes. I think content should have difficulty. How can difficulty be gated when everyone can get there with some investment?
I like to play a game solo with the options of one of my friends joining. Finding plebs to play the game, hell no. I don’t think it’s that hypocrite at all.
Some of the most end game content should not be achievable by everyone. I have played PoE for YEARS and have not gotten to most of the end game. I have played D3 and been able to see everything because the only thing to accomplish in that game is see who can get the highest GRift. I get bored with that very fast.
Same should be for types of play. I HATE pvp, so will never play it. Doesn’t mean I should have access to all of that PvP content without having to PvP.
Plus, if they do implement trading, gating gear won’t matter either.
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Gating a content by difficulty can be made by various means.
Making the content only clearable by a group of players is one of them. And for a game that will have a multiplayer component it’s a totally consistent one.
Why this way of gating would be “inferior” to others ?
Because you progress in games and unlock stuff? And it is clear for long time all content will be clearable as a solo player.
I thought gated content was mostly known as content behind time barriers but whatever.
I’m just saying that having specific content for multiplayer could be an additional incentive for people that want to play in group
Ah yes, I understand your point now and 100% agree that this is a problem. It seems the topic of game difficulty and balance is a controversial one so it is prone to being misinterpreted or misrepresented.
Perhaps the issue here isnt so much one of difficulty(which is how your original post initially sounded like to me), after reading through most of this thread, I think the issues can be summed up as follows:
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The problem is not actually about difficulty. It is the disparity in difficulty between the campaign and the end game grind that can come as a shock to some players.
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Being able to beat the entire game by reliably cheesing/ignoring mechanics is a failure of a core game system and this is pretty game breaking.
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All of this comes together to create the illusion that the end game is too difficult and encourages many players to give feedback based on this illusion of difficulty, which will take up unnecessary resources from the dev team and could end up “fixing something that isn’t broken”.
The bottomline is Points 1 and 2 need to be addressed first before making anymore changes or tweaks to end game difficulty.
All that being said, I do feel that at least most of the changes applied so far weren’t too far in the wrong direction. There is something to be said about respecting a player’s time in this day and age. I think this semi-checkpoint system of -4 runs is a good middleground penalty for failing, though there are some kinks that need to be worked out with that as well.
I personally cleared all but 2 of the new monolith timelines before the last hotfix hit and I’ll just say that gosh darn it was painful. Between my game randomly crashing for unknown reasons and being 1 shot by Lagon over and over again because the horrible warpath pathing optimization wouldnt allow me to avoid his beam reliably, it really felt like my time was being flushed down the toilet. 15-27+ runs just to catch up or get back to the boss each time I die or crash is ALOT of hours to ask of the average player for something that is largely no fault of theirs. I eventually gave up on warpath and respecced to a half-**sed shield throw build just to get past all the bugginess and I think I’ve died only once so far(excluding crashes).
I do feel that once all these optimizations and bugs have been worked out, they probably should revisit the difficulty question and consider bumping it up slightly. I can definitely see it being a little “too easy” if I imagine playing the game with 0 bugs and optimization issues.
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Did they not say that they wouldn’t have content that was only doable in a party?.
IMO the game needs to have a smoothly increasing difficulty as you progress from lvl 1 areas to the highest “normal” monoliths, adding watered down versions of the end game boss mechanics earlier in the game so that players can experience them and work out how to deal with them before they encounter the boss version of them.
Then once you’ve done the lvl 90 timelines you can start the empowered versions from there that go up to above the player level cap with additional mechanics and a more punishing death penalty. As long as their aren’t any bullshit one shot mechanics (and my view on what that is is likely different to Lizard’s, which is fine, as long as his view isn’t used for the “normal” part of the game). More frequent smaller hits are probably better so you can experience more of the health bar than alive or dead. We are not Schrodinger’s cat.
Then you can do it all again on masochist.
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That is probably the best way to describe current LE endgame balance.
Peope that are not familar with that term should look it up, that made my day xD
Good Llama
I would love to see some random time rifts in the campaign in the future so we can fight endgame bosses tuned down for simply getting the feel for it and some decent rewards. Campaign is very static and easy right now.
Dying not being punished and respawning near death location makes players lazy.
With this discussion going on you guys discussed about content for hardcore gamers and casuals.
A very very huge motivation for me with games like this is the “Illusion” that I can achieve thinks hardcore players do. Why are hardcore gamers destroying content? Because they invest a lot more time into games and in result are getting the gear they need to beat the hardest content.
So if I would spend the same amount of time, I would be equally mighty.
If it would need 200 hours of playtime to gear a character that can beat the level 100 empowered boss, a hardcore gamer may reach this point after 15-20 days. A casual player may reach it after 100 days. But he can reach it. Just after a much longer period of lifetime.
And this is what fuels my incentive to play. The more I play, the more powerful become. I see the high level stuff and dream of it “some day I can do that, too”.
What happens in LE currently is not feeding this illusion. The reason are the current boss mechanics.
Imho I should be able to out level the boss on all stages before lvl 100. If I’m level 75 and have good gear, I should be able to beat the lvl 68 boss without being a keyboard ninja.
Everything that is below max level should be doable for people that reach the level of that content or out level it. I’m not talking about that every shitty build with crappy gear should do it. I want the achievement of beating a boss be gated behind something. But this should not solely be the player skill - not in an ARPG. Maybe somebody with a shitty build and crappy gear can beat the boss because he has very good player skill - referring to the naked boss kills. But in return I want to be able to beat these bosses with less player skill, but a good build and good gear. There has to be a way to compensate the lack of player skills by better gear. This is not possible right now.
If I’m going to challenge a void boss, there should be a certain point when my Void resistance and other protections are strong enough to not get oneshot by any of his abilities. Like “To beat Rayeh you need 800hp and 1500 void protections”. Increase that numbers if this sounds to easy to achieve for a lvl 68 boss. This way I have a goal to work for. I can go to kill the boss with less resistances, making the attempt harder and more likely to fail. Or I can farm for even more prot so it will get easier.
Right now this isn’t possible. There are still attacks that wipe players within milliseconds, when they do a mistake. No matter what gear they have.
I don’t see lvl 55, 62, 68,… bosses to be hardcore encounters for the top 1% players. If I get to level 80, I should be able to do lvl 80 content if I did not screw my build.
And this content should not be gated behind player skill.
I know I’m repeating myself. This is because for me personally it Is so important to point out: Its ok for me to learn some mechanics to be able to beat a boss. But it’s totally overdone currently when I have to know every single attack and how to avoid it - or die.
In other games I have played, you go into a bossfight and it takes about 2 minutes to see in what direction the fight us going. This does not mean you die instantly. Instead you recognize that the boss hits too hard so your potions are empty and your regeneration cannot compensate. You know “this is going to fail”, but still are fighting to the very end. Or you see that in phases, when the boss is vulnerable, you don’t do enough damage. Also you may notice that if you could dodge some particular attacks you might be able to beat him with the same gear you have right now. Or you can farm some better gear.
And then, when you have that better gear or tweaked your build, you go into the fight and after that 2 minutes you recognize “yeah, its working. If I can avoid 70% of his ^insert attack name here^ I will be able to do it!”
You can create challenging combat that does not rely on oneshot mechanics. You can support skillfull play without this.
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I don’t think that anyone is suggesting one-shot mechanics, on the contrary. What you saying makes sense. Gear should enable you to take some damage and not having to avoid every attack, but it shouldn’t trivialise the hardest fights in the game.
*There could be SOME one-shot mechanics that you deff need to avoid and you can see them coming, but not all attacks should work that way and require “ninja” skills.
I think it’s important to remember that the game developers are still trying to get all of the core mechanics in place so they can release the game and start making money to further fund development. So, in the interim, it’s important to look at how they are approaching things, rather than the exact implementation. They added empowered MoFs, which says to me that they understand that certain players (e.g. the top 1%) are going to want enhanced challenges. I could easily see this evolving into “Mythic” difficulty down the road that adds new challenging mechanics to the boss fights when they have time to design and code those.
Also, it was crystal clear that the game developers were listening to the community at large regarding MoFs and have tried to adjust them accordingly. That sort of feedback rapid response is a great sign for the future.
I know this drags things out for those capable of bursting the boss down. But, on the other hand, this forces all players to observe and appreciate the boss mechanics and learn the fights the way they were designed (assuming their high-damage builds will die to the boss damage). This seems somewhat in line with your other message that it’s important for the playerbase to learn the game. If you could skip core boss mechanics now by simply stacking damage and going to town before the fight cycles through its mechanics, then that is what everyone who struggles with the movement skills or reflexes will do and the game will get damage heavy in a way that it suffered early on from survivability builds dominating the Arena ladder. We want to encourage the developers to create interesting fights with a cycle of mechanics. So, we should support their stop gap efforts to force us to go through the entire fight.
There’s a balance between the Wengari Matriarch example you cited (dying without a health reset) and the MoF system that sends you back to the start when you die to the boss. I actually like the concept of a checkpoint before the boss. If a player is dying because he is undergeared, then the boss will appropriately punish him over and over again until he spends his time farming, rather than learning the mechanics or attempting to navigate them.
However, if the player is appropriately geared (and knowledgeable), but simply made a mistake and got one-shot, then it’s fair to give him another shot without forcing him to run through an hour of echoes first.
That being said, the concept that you’re “punished” for being sent back to the start isn’t entirely accurate either. Arena keys are still the best EXP and gold in the game and gold is how you most efficiently gamble for new gear. So, while I haven’t died in any echos since the new MoF started, if I did, I would look at it as time well spent getting 1+ Arena keys, so I could make my character stronger for the next time.
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Question for the players that already beat the MoF content.
Do you feel like there is a constant ramping up in difficulty the higher level you go ?
Because I beat Abomination, Argentus, Formosus and I found Formosus which is the highest level of the three to beat WAY easier than Argentus for instance, where there is so much stuff to avoid on the ground whereas for Formosus the fight was easy.
Way less ground effects to avoid, easy to avoid the ray in this wide area, etc…
Did you have the same impression ?
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