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The Boss Conundrum and the Unintended Consequences on Item Creation

 
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4/1/2022 14:37:01   
Sapphire
Banned


Let me preface this with, I do not have an answer, and perhaps what's going on is a necessary evil, but TBH, whenever I see the game/players being steered towards an inevitable conclusion I don't think it's healthy for players and staff alike.

Example-> Neutral armors/weapons with specials. This has been touched on by myself, and others. Neutral armors are not optimal in nearly any situation, and weapons with specials are only competitive in neutral armors. So because 99% of players tend to not use neutral armors, and thus, weapons with specials, creating neutral armors and weapons with specials by players is viewed as not good. Staff would have to put some type of crazy good or even game-breaking effect on these in order to make them desirable game-wide, and so the move over time to focus on 0 proc or 100 proc only puts staff in a corner as to not really develop these types of items. It's a waste of their time, TBH. I wish staff would fix weapons with specials at the very least to be competitive and give themselves more options for the future. It's a win for them, as well as the players.

That paragraph is a long-winded preface to draw this analogy:

Staff somewhat allows many aspects of this game to be fair-play versus normal monsters, with a few exceptions of course. But items or things that break boss fighting is more of a focus. On the surface, I get that.

But when you start, over time, to create ways to counter the game's ability to make boss fighting so easy, with things such as

Damage Caps
Damage Clawbacks
Freedom
Boss Boost
Form shift immunity
and the list continues to grow (I prob left some out)

While these are attempts to make the fights a challenge, it is also creating the situation where certain types of items, ideas contained within, etc are not favorable to owning for more and more and more players.

If bosses always resist Fear, for example, then why invest in a multitude of fear items or even bother playing a Fear-based playstyle if you run the risk of struggling even more than normal due to the reliance on fear strategies? At the end of the day, players are simply trying to get to the rewards, and using items to get there the easiest is the subset of items best used day in and day out. That's reality.

The list goes on and on and on. Why use daze, fear, or any status infliction strats within in your active inventory if you won't be able to either reliably use or simply the status cant be used at all?

The boss Conundrum to try and make the fight a challenge is unintendingly steering item buying decisions based on what works or doesn't work versus all or most bosses. And because of this, with time, making items with said effects is becoming more and more and more a waste of time for staff to use on items....as less and less and less people will be buying those items...so it's the same argument as the weapon with specials/nuetral armors, just that it comes from a different space in the game.

The game, with time, is simply narrowing down little by little by little what players want, and thus, what staff will make.

And it's not good for the long term.


I am not advocating for easier boss fights, nor have a solution or idea, but this issue became self evident to me as every new release I literally analyze it based on this point of view, and I would be willing to bet many players do too.

So with time, self buffs, heals, and things that always work on monsters or on oneself will dominate the item landscape.

Just how it is.

< Message edited by SapphireCatalyst2021 -- 4/1/2022 14:40:42 >
Post #: 1
4/1/2022 16:04:27   
  Lorekeeper
And Pun-isher

 

The content of quests is not exclusively bosses, but the monsters of a regular power level that players must deal with on the way. Were they entirely irrelevant, they may as well be nonexistent - And so attrition situations and other environmental modifiers (For example, the escalating Darkness burn in Forlorn Wake, removable only by attacking with Darkness) have been explored. As a player optimizes their loadout with time and experience, it's understandable that regular mobs and minibosses will have less of an impact on build choices, and the burden is on quests to periodically remind players that these lesser mobs still merit some attention. The Dragonlorn Keep MC quest is an example of this with a simple effect on a major scale.

Ultimately, then, there is no such conundrum. This is the sum of two simple aspects of game design: The fact that a player base trends towards time optimization as their experience with the game grows, and the inherent need for boss fights to be special.

To explain: The above mentioned 'attempts' are individual tools used towards a common, necessary end: Distinguishing boss monsters from regular mobs. If an enemy can be trivially stunned and destroyed before its mechanics begin to play out, it's functionally indistinguishable from a regular mook. Its design goes to waste, and the only way in which this is any fun is to serve the power fantasy of effortlessly defeating all foes , bosses included. Catering to this would require not catering to the tastes of any other players, as well as giving up on ever making an interesting enemy, and it's therefore not an option.

Therefore, items that serve to completely prevent an enemy from acting can and should be less reliable against bosses. That this was pursued incrementally rather than performed decisively years earlier has caused many problems by virtue of each individual measure not sufficing on its own, but the principle holds. Further, I would personally submit for consideration that combinations that strip away base assumptions and prevent enemy mechanics from ever taking place would have to be excluded from challenge content specifically given the implausibility of getting around balancing all of them in the general game.

Does this mean that it's all downhill from here in terms of boss design? Far from it. Kore, the boss of the Necromancer quest line, has windows during which she loses Freedom and a hard/soft stun can prevent or weaken an attack respectively. The ShadowScythe Virophage had similar opportunities to use stuns for an alternative purpose, weakening it in several ways. Opportunities to work around such mechanics and bosses that react in alternative ways to status effects that aren't normally good against them have been at play for quite a while now. The solution to an entirely different problem, then, is already rolling out over time, with more exciting mechanics in the future.
Post #: 2
4/2/2022 11:45:33   
Sapphire
Banned


I just hope we see a lot of variety in boss fights such that it's not always the same features. I don't think it's the case always, but there are some mainstay effects that tend to be there.

I understand that boss fights are meant to be more challenging, and I am not saying to remove stuff to make them easy. My big concern is why would players buy and use items for fear, daze, paralyze, etc etc playstyles if they're by in large worthless versus bosses? They would only serve to handicap themselves in boss fights. Players tend to what I call over-optimize or min-mod the game and their characters and thus, the reality is any items that create turn-loss tend to be extremely difficult to land on bosses, if not get outright blocked due to freedom. In time, it makes it not worth investing heavily in certain statuses and thus, it kind of makes it a waste of time to even create them in a small way. The perceived value of new items by the player base is directly tied to usefulness in boss fights. How much so may be different for every player. I truly believe that as time goes on, the game will move more and more and more towards the evaluation being more heavily evaluated based on this. I just don't want for players and staff alike, to get to a point where items made become more of a challenge to please the player base because of a potential perceived notion that "Badversus bosses = pass on buying." I already view it this way when I see new releases. I just wonder if others are here too. I hope it can be avoided long term for everyone. Hopefully, the game will continue to evolve and this won't be an issue.

I am looking forward to new mechanics. You guys have done a great job in recent memory both on monster creation and item creation with new ideas. I hope it continues.

I do have a question if you're allowed to reveal.... With the stat revamp planned and a lot of UI updates and all that, is there a planned deep-dive look into status effects and maybe revamping some of these ideas? There are some repetitive effects with only slightly different mechanics. There's underutilized status. This could use a change, too, and a week or two for these revamps I think would create an exciting release.

Post #: 3
4/2/2022 11:57:02   
  Lorekeeper
And Pun-isher

 

Beyond matters that I can't disclose due to my NDA, all of those concerns were already addressed by my initial reply. I hope it was sufficiently helpful.
Post #: 4
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