I used to complain Echo knight, now I have almost 50 kills and just basic weapon from npc. All maxed level and exalted purple gear and all 3 blue rings. You just need to upgrade gear thats it, and know which traits to use.
Right now I have 1 plate, 1 mesh, 1 cloth, 1 leather piece for armor
I will maintain that gameās combat has indeed become trivialized after the hotfixes. However, I also understand that what I want from this game, will most likely not appeal to most people who are willing to buy it. And right now, what is important to the studio and future of the game is selling as many copies as possible.
That being said, if the game does end up selling more copies that leaves the developerās hand open to incorporate features like real modifiers where both ends and the middle of the spectrum, including myself will be happy. I liked the combat before hotfixes, but most people thought it was too hard. If it takes dumbing it down to sell copies and have the financial freedom to keep developing the game in the direction of choice based difficulty levels, then so be it.
A minor annoyance for me that literally walk around and press one button to kill mobs right now, which is incomparable to reality that a studioās future and the livelihood of 80+ people depends on the gameās sales numbers.
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Fair enough.
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You must not have fully absorbed what I said. The core issue is that the boss is infinitely repeatable while dropping some of the best loot in the game every time itās killed. Allowing players to attempt it repeatedly without meaningful friction wouldnāt make sense. Sure, we can rejig things if needed, but itās not as simple as just letting people try again and again - more would need to change structurally for that to work.
Also, on this point:
It doesnāt have to be exactly this way, but thereās nothing inherently wrong with catering to hardcore players. Challenging combat benefits the entire community. Look at bosses like Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts, Algalon & Cāthun in WoW, or the whole of the original Naxxramas raid, Isshin, the Sword Saint from Sekiro, or Malenia in Elden Ring. These fights are locked behind extra progress, time gates or hidden paths that need to be solved. Algalon, for example you needed to beat every challenge mode for every other boss in the raid, and once you started the fight you only had an hour to beat him each week.
And yet, these are the fights people remember. They become communal goals. Players share guides, optimize their builds, and grind with the hope of finally beating them. Thereās a sense of prestige in doing so, thatās a massive motivator.
Now zoom out. Look at how this plays out across the broader gaming community. People post boss fights online, they stream their attempts, once players get exceptionally good at the mechanics of a fight they do no-hit runs. Streamers and content creators are drawn to games with hard bosses because the content that comes out of those fights is compelling and shareable. A great example is Baldurās Gate 3 with itās honour mode run, where if your party died you had to do it all over again, with an average playthrough taking around 100 hours, all to possibly fail at the final hurdle, for what? A golden dice and a Steam achievement? maybe, but the celebration of posting your success on the Reddit forums, and having people āwelcome you to the clubā was something people drove for. These are free marketing and community engagement, look at Kai Cenetās hilarious 1700 death Elden Ring run and the memes that arose from that.
If a game is too easy or every major boss is just a bump in the road, thereās less incentive to dig deep. You lose that communal sense of āsomeday I want to beat this.ā The game becomes flat - just numbers going up with no test of what they actually mean.
So no, itās not just about catering to elitists. Itās about building something aspirational into the structure of the game, something that gives players, communities, and content creators something to latch onto. Thatās healthy for the game long-term.
NRftW is a literal example of this, for the time being at least.
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Thank you, this makes sense.
I understand the sentiment here, but I only think one of these fits into the narrative, and only partly (cannot say anything about Sephiroth though). Algalon was gated in a somewhat similar way, though only Ć³ne player had to complete the quest, once. In the case of Sword Saint Isshin, Malenia, Cāthun and the original Naxxramas raid, there was no drawn out and repetitive hurdle you had to get over every time. Imagine having to re-clear all trash before a boss each time you want to re-try itā¦
If the boss is designed to be artificially hard, by making 9/10 of the playerās time spent on tries a bore, then it is in my opinion very bad design. Great that you agree on changes being allowed. But if you also agree that the above mentioned fights were great and memorable, then Iām led to believe that it is the other side of the coin that bothers you, that it is currently the best way to farm endgame gear, or at least uniques, as most of the bosses you mention carry no rewards greater than other content.
It is my assumption that this is a result of Early Access, as this allows players to find and play around with the most iconic items in the game, at least this would make sense.
It is also an assumption of mine, that they mean to introduce 4 more crucible bosses, seeing as there are still 4 locked ironmaidens similar to the current one.
In a perfect world, Iād see the rewards of doing crucible runs lowered, with more challenges and mechanics, and if Iām right in my assumption, introducing another 4x8 āmeaninglessā and repetitive rooms to gatekeep the fun content would be a huge waste.
Now, given that this is early access, and we are here to test the game and help them refine it, it is my belief that allowing players more time interacting with the content they like, will be of more use rather than having a, in my opinion, mandatory time sink between tries.
I would also argue that, with pestilence outbreaks now a part of the game, the crucible rewards should be lowered to favor the new content instead, as this is new and, somewhat, untested.
To conclude,
I do agree with this, but I do not believe it fits the narrative here, in the sense that boring and repetitive time sinks are purely artificial difficulty, and should be avoided like the plague, as this is a cop-out and horrible design, taking away from the primary experience (can be debated) of fighting the Echo Knight. So they should, in my opinion, either:
- fix the difficulty discrepancy between the crucible floors and the Echo Knight, either the whole experience is to be challenging, or none of it. Doing this in-between is confusing, otherwise this discussion would not be taking place.
- Allow people to enjoy the boss in a pace that is more reasonable to the common player, where Iād even advocate they make the boss harder, as the time sink is currently part of the difficulty, allowing the boss to stand out not because it was annoying, but because it is a very well designed boss (like most of the bosses you mention - thereās a reason From Software veered from these time sinks - they are not rage games).
Edit:
I completely agree with you that truly challenging content is a must for this game to be the success I hope it will become, but time consuming and challenging have not been synonyms in gaming since vanilla wow. This is to say, challenges are allowed to be time consuming, but only so far as most of the time is spent on the actual challenge.
Iād ask you to go reread what I wrote about challenge as you are missing the point and moving the goal posts - either deliberately to suit your own needs, or simply out of carelessness, and to illustrate this point:
They still had to complete the challenge modes in the first place to even be allowed to fight it, often requiring weeks of attempts, as each bosses hard mode required learning and mastering (with each reset requiring reclearing the trash), after that is completed they only had an hour to try him, at the one-hour mark the boss would kill everyone and vanish, then requiring the raid to have itās weekly reset and the group to have to clear all the trash and bosses again to be able to attempt him. They are part of the challenge, part of the friction.
ā
Your original post claimed:
I addressed both of these topics.
I think you misunderstand me. I am not trying to debate you, I am trying to discuss the topic. To me it is not about being right or wrong, it is to get to the core of the issue, as I do not believe we fundamentally disagree, just on some minor details.
Regarding Algalon, all the sources Iāve used to refresh my memory states that you had to defeat the 5 bosses on hardmode just once, then you had the key for your weekly 1 hour try.
This is still not my point though. Every modern example you brought up was an example of how the repetitive time sink was removed, as it would take away from the experience, ie. spawn points added right next to all the bosses in Elden Ring, and Sword Saint Isshin being one of the few bosses in Sekiro with no tedious walk-back on each try (as far as i remember).
The āLegendaryā status of Algalon only has this status in a very small segment of gaming as a whole, as WoWās endgame was too time consuming and committal for main stream audiences (sure, WoW was main stream, but raiding was not). I do believe that at the time, the WoW community as a whole saw the constraints as epic, but this was also a community that valued time sinks over challenge. Should Moon Studios really āwasteā one of their best designed bosses on this small a segment of the overall target audience?
Do you have any comments or thoughts on how the difficulty discrepancy between the 8 crucible floors and the Echo Knight is confusing and misleading?
Or how some of the examples you mentioned was, as far as i see it, examples of how removing the repetitive time sink was a great choice?
Maybe some thoughts on whether lowering or removing the rewards from the crucible would make you more or less inclined to agree to removing the tedium?
Anything to move the conversation forward, rather than throwing mud?
No, I am doing my best trying to understand you and your arguments, but communication is a two-way thing. Not sure if you are confused with people trying to be productive on internet forums, or if you truly believe that I am this dense a douchbag?
Iām starting to believe you are simply here to trollā¦ Again, if you are not interested in discussing the topic, please state that, rather than wasting both of our time.
Iāve already explained my side, you just donāt want to understand it. So Iām done trying.
Yeaā¦ Iām done. Sorry for trying to explain how communication works, and actually showing interest in your thoughts. it is not my place to educate you. Wish you the best
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Cheers thanks buddy!
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I definitely agree with you on the design of the fight being ānot funā.
Granted, Iāve now cleared him over 20x times (takes less than 10 mins per run).
Of course I was only able to do so using something like the āSubzeroā build by Larry Puss (The Cat). Essentially you just combo freeze him, ignoring any/all mechanics of the fight.
The fight usually takes less than a minute.
Prior to this build, Iād challenged the crucible and failed around a dozen times to take him down.
Honestly, based on the loot of the fight, he resembles a trophy mob.
*Designed to be cheesed by end game players looking for something ārareā (trophies) to farm while they test out different builds.
Pretty much all the legendary gear he drops (boss drops inc) are overshadowed by custom building plagued gear.
So all that said, I do think he could use a rework.. especially considering there will be higher tier stages for the Crucible.
If the devs could rework him so early-mid game players could actually beat him. This would give those players a chance to experiment with the legendary gear (since they wonāt have a full set of Plagued/Exalted gear yet).
His moveset is perfectly fine and well telegraphed.
If anything, ask to tune his damage and hp numbers, not have him reworked for no reason.
If midgame builds are struggling with him, itās a tuning issue, not a design one.
Itās a mix of both his dmg and spam/mobility.
*Iād tune down his numbers while giving wider breaks in his attack pattern.
If nothing else, this would be a good chance to incorporate story into the mix ala Hades style progression.
IE: Prior to his āfirst defeatā (at your hands) he only has one phase (mounted). You can talk to him after (as he knees next to his fallen friend) and experience the onset of madness that befell the Knights.
Perhaps he flees for now, vowing not so show you mercy next time?
That said, simply addressing the numbers and attack spam will suffice for now.