I understand it is part of the challenge, and probably the ansiety of high risk, high reward, and it is fine when you play it accepting the consequences. But I’m here to talk about the frustrating parts of the crucible, and why they are frustrating, and what could be done.
- One hit kills. This includes powerful attacks but also falling into a pit. The player usually feels cheated, because it happened to fast, the automatic jump did not work when it was supposed to, the attack animation took over, there is limited space to move / dodge. And what makes it worse is the longer the run is. You invest a lot of time to be quickly taken from you.
- Getting invested into a build and losing all when you die. It is really frustrating finally making a good combination of powers (echoes) and losing all, without being able to finish the run.
- Not being able to fight the boss without needing to replay all previous 9 stages that come before. Echo knight is a tough boss fight, with two stages that have both a lot of health, which has strong attacks that can kill you with one hit. All of that makes specially frustrating to transverse 9 levels of challenging characters to face a boss and get hit once and die. Learning how to fight Echo Knight is specially frustrating because each time you die, you need to replay all 9 stages again. Probably something you developers did not experience, because when designing him you could fight him as much as you desire. And when you played through the crucible you were already well trained.
What I will propose to alleviate the frustrations is the following:
- When a player dies he gets the option to continue playing from the start of the level he is in. But no rewards will be given from now on. He can simply continue playing until he beats the boss, but will get no rewards from it.
This solution allows the player to continue playing with his build, and also train and learn how to beat the echo knight. It does not change the original challenge of the crucible.
