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[Suggestion] Stop making Story Bosses Hard (LS4 Spoilers)


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I made this suggestion back in my HoT review, and I'm going to make it here; Stop making PvE story bosses hard. I'm currently sitting in the active fight with Scruffy 2.0, dead, having died at least a dozens times, and I honestly just want to throw my hands up. The point where you frustrate your player to quitting is bad game design. I understand, as game developers, you want to make the fight epic - oh no! Taimi suffocating! I care and have to hurry, but I have massive amounts of projectiles, burning, aoe's, and a completely incompetent NPC that DOES NOT use his reflect as he should... that means I don't care about Taimi, I just want to get out of the fight.

So here are some suggestions:

  • Lower the Bosses HP pool: The boss fight is taking way too long, and it is not enjoyable, take down the HP
  • Stop with the rapid fire AoE's AND projectiles: Slow down on the boss's attack
  • Relax on the complicated moves: This isn't a raid, it's a story boss, being solo'd, there's no need to make so difficult
  • Program a better companion: In every fight I did during LS4 (Sunspears, Corsairs, the rag tag team, Braham) they stopped attacking and just stood there.. seriously during the inquest swarm they all just stood there

I know the automatic response from the forum goers will be "get better," sure, I'm willing to do that, I've tried doing that, but ANet keeps making their story bosses more and more difficult. This isn't fun anymore. Please chill out on the difficulty of the story bosses.

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I'll be honest, when I saw the thread title my first reaction was "seriously? It's not that hard." But thinking back on that scuffy fight in particular I agree it dragged on for 2 long to the point where I did indeed stop caring about Taimi and just wanted to get the fight over with. I had similar issues with the PoF boss fights. After the first couple of minutes of of doing the same action over and over you get very tired of it. I think lowering the boss health pool would be a good thing, while keeping the difficulty up.

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I totally get it. I know the kneejerk is "It's not that hard!" or "get better!" If this were a raid or dungeon or some other sort of group instanced content I'd be like, "psh.. get over it or don't do it," but seriously? It's a story boss. S.T.O.R.Y. I'm new to going through a full LS. Last one I did was Season 1 - yeah. I did the expansions and I'm noticing a real trend here with ANet. They really push their players into the difficulty with stories, and yeah that's not a good go for me. I like stories to take a breather. I get to set my own pace. I get to enjoy the fights, look at the art, really take notice of the mobs. Not in GW2. I'm seriously constantly running out of dodges, skills / healing on cooldowns, and shaking my head at the totally inept companions.

With the Warden, I didn't even know she was taking on the forms of the 6 deities until like 3/4ths into her health bar b/c she wouldn't stop running around. I saw Lyssa, but I had assumed that was just her mesmer thing. Seriously, just slow down their skills and let me enjoy it. If I wanted a challenge, I'd go into a raid or fractal.

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OP has a valid point and I can see some bosses being difficult, if not anger inducing to some players; personally I enjoy the difficulty. However, I do agree that the fights are sometimes too long. There have been numerous times where I'm just like, "omg just get this over with already." I found myself saying this while saving Taimi.

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I disagree with you guys. I think the story content should have a level of difficulty that provides a challenge to the player. If you, the player, can't figure out how to beat a fight then you die. That's how games should work; you should be rewarded to overcoming a challenge and punished for failing. The punishment in this game isn't drastic, either. You get to restart at checkpoints, you come back with your health, you don't lose items and the bosses seldom recover health in story content. You guys have it easy.

If you're incapable of beating content on your own consider the following:1) Change your build. I can't think of a single class that doesn't have a good build for PvE content. That means you might need to change your weapon set, specializations or skills. When you die and respawn at a checkpoint you can make changes (in most cases) to help overcome obstacles in the current fight.2) Take some instant repair canisters with you. When you die so much that your armor is broken then you're not very effective. Repair before getting back into the fight.3) Party up with some friends. If you can't do it by yourself then bring others along.

I'm not going to "git gud" or anything like that... but, the content isn't that hard. I think some people just need to learn to use all of the tools they have at their disposal and go into fight with the right gear and skill. For what it's worth, I run around in full exotics on all my characters (at best) and change my skills/weapons frequently to match whatever situation I find myself in. You guys should try that sometime.

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I didnt find the Scruffy fight to be particularly difficult, but it was annoying. I detest the invulnerability stage concept. If Scruffy can be made to be invulnerabble to the point that only a specific item, which is highly unlikely to be present on any other battlefield, then why not build an army of scruffies and never worry about any enemy again?

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@Chickenooble.5014 said:I disagree with you guys. I think the story content should have a level of difficulty that provides a challenge to the player.

I agree with this, and with the guy who says the fights sometimes takes too long. I think ArenaNet could reduce the health of some bosses, but not simplify their mechanics or reduce the damage they do as the OP is saying.

This fight was IMO easy - considering how you could just float down, to the safe area below the boss, and recover there. I have died a lot in every mission of the Season 4, but the safe areas in that last boss made it somewhat boring.

The fight I really have issues with was the one in the Underworld, considering how we couldn't access our inventory to change builds. I also think ArenaNet relies on control effects way too much, and sometimes they use way too many visual effects in fights. But the Daybreak boss didn't go overboard in either of those aspects.

@TheUndefined.1720 said:

  • Program a better companion: In every fight I did during LS4 (Sunspears, Corsairs, the rag tag team, Braham) they stopped attacking and just stood there.. seriously during the inquest swarm they all just stood there

That's on purpose. The behavior you are describing is what the NPCs do when they die. Otherwise, a player could die, go AFK and sooner or later the NPCs would kill everything.

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I'll be honest I had a tough time with this boss. Was doing my best to avoid all the aoe and then those dumb sparks started circling. Didn't even bother to check mini map to realize there was destroyable objects on the perimeter. There was probably some kind of text or something that hinted as to what to do but again was to busy trying to avoid everything blowing up around me. I figured it out eventually but it was a lot of frustration and confusion before that point. Didn't really notice how long it lasted but the fight seemed like it lasted 20 minutes.

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The problem has never been hard or not hard. It has always been about scaling.

(( waits for the "That's what she said" jokes to be over ))

I've always liked how games like DDO did instanced content where the player could select difficulty and the instance would scale correctly. GW2 does have scaling tech but it has never worked correctly or been applied well in story instances. We know they can scale things as they do it in events and in fractals. It just would be nice if they added a story mode to PS stuff that toned down the raid mechanics for those solo players that just want to see the story unfold.

There is also another point to consider that until recently I never used to think about. In many of the boss fights, I don't think the design teams expect you to succeed the first time through. They want people learning the mechanics to beat it. I know to some people this is annoying (personally I don't like that design...I don't like replaying content over and over) but I think ANet is using this design style to try to train the player base for other game types, like high lvl fractals and raiding.

There isn't a raider out there that expects the first run through of a new raid wing to be successful. I know the PvE story isn't a raid, and I agree, there are parts of the PS over the last few years that have been very hard, especially for solo players, but I do think it might be part of the design....however distasteful that might be.

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There's one online game I used to play a bit where the story never scaled you. If the story is meant for level 10, then everything is level 10. If you're level 80 then you just blast through it.Of course as the story goes on, the higher the enemy levels get as well.By this point of course some people might go through the story if new, rather fast and if the story was meant for level 80, people could not touch it.

The way the company fixed this to allow certain people to at least experience the story and have some fun, or at the very least just want to see the story and not care on the challenge as that's not what they was aiming for, they set up 3 modes for it.Easy mode where the enemies will be a bit easier, and around your level if you're lower than the default level. They would be less aggressive and the HP is lowered.Normal mode where it set the way it's meant to be originally.Hard mode where they went out of the way for those that want the challenge with even more aggressive than usual enemies and the enemies being HP sponges.

The difference here though is those that went through easy get to experience the story and get the minimal of what they were supposed to get for completing the story (in this case, if you're supposed to get a mastery, you would), but the only way to get the sure rewards or better is to do the story on normal or higher.Meaning, if you wanted like the items, or achievement, or whatever you're supposed to get after beating the story that isn't a mastery... you have to play it on normal or higher.

I don't see an issue on if Arenanet did this, but I can't see them doing that.

They could've done that on the ghost eater, but they just nerfed it to hell... so...

I guess just nerf these stories?

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@Chickenooble.5014 said:I disagree with you guys. I think the story content should have a level of difficulty that provides a challenge to the player. If you, the player, can't figure out how to beat a fight then you die. That's how games should work; you should be rewarded to overcoming a challenge and punished for failing. The punishment in this game isn't drastic, either. You get to restart at checkpoints, you come back with your health, you don't lose items and the bosses seldom recover health in story content. You guys have it easy.

If you're incapable of beating content on your own consider the following:1) Change your build. I can't think of a single class that doesn't have a good build for PvE content. That means you might need to change your weapon set, specializations or skills. When you die and respawn at a checkpoint you can make changes (in most cases) to help overcome obstacles in the current fight.2) Take some instant repair canisters with you. When you die so much that your armor is broken then you're not very effective. Repair before getting back into the fight.3) Party up with some friends. If you can't do it by yourself then bring others along.

I'm not going to "git gud" or anything like that... but, the content isn't that hard. I think some people just need to learn to use all of the tools they have at their disposal and go into fight with the right gear and skill. For what it's worth, I run around in full exotics on all my characters (at best) and change my skills/weapons frequently to match whatever situation I find myself in. You guys should try that sometime.

I disgree with you.

Change my build? Buy repair canisters? Bring along a party? Are we talking about raids here?

IMO, story content are meant to be enjoyable. For an average player, and there are many out there, having to die many times in order go through the story is not enjoyment, that's total frustration.

This is supposed to be story progression. I want to discover new locations, plots and enjoy the gameplay along the way. Making the LS too challenging makes me want to give up or quickly get over it, too frustrated to care about anything else.

I know there are many elitists out there who wants everything to be challenging and NOTHING to them is ever difficult. Well, good for you. For the rest of us, please let us enjoy our games.

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But.. the story isn't difficult. None of the bosses have hard mechanics, and what mechanics they do have are introduced to you super early usually.

Plus this is LWS4. If you've been doing the story chronologically (ie personal story > lws2 > hot > lws3) nothing in POF beyond Balth and the last LWS4 boss should be "hard" at all.

The only thing about the LWS4 story that may be too dragged out is the final story bosses HP. But there have been very few fights I would consider "hard" (even when I started on a bearbow ranger who didnt know what a breakbar was, I only had issues on Mordy and Caudecus)

The NPCs even res you if you're super slow, and dying just resets you and keeps the boss HP the same.. so I'm not sure what else they can do. You barely get punished for dying at all. I guess if you die 4+ times you might have to repair?

The bosses tend to boil down to "avoid the aoe, do a mechanic transition". This isn't an audiobook, it's a game. You still need to play the game somewhat. Adding some mechanics beyond a punching bag is nice because otherwise it's a chore and boring and theres no reason to ever fight anything if they would do that. Just make it a giant textbubble cutscene and be done with it.

Are you sure you're talking about the "average" player, or someone below average? Because many people I know, who I promise you are not hardcore players and dont raid or do pvp or whatever, had and have no issues.

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Scruffy was tedium incarnet: didnt die at all just was fustrated with the length of the fight, the constant cc, large aoes everywhere being spammed. I was almost always out of endurance so had to take hits cause out of dodges. Everytime i tried to attack in melee i was forced to be defensive due to the aoes. Fight i think took me 15-30 mins on a weaver in zerk armor. Fights in story imo should not take more then 10 mins, and should only be for big story climax bosses

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@Nikal.4921 said:This is story content. To tell a story, not prepare you for raids. I am thoroughly discouraged by the difficulty of story bosses and so hardly bother with them. I'd like to get the story line, so it's a real disappointment.

That said, did you ever felt threatened by Balthazar? I know I didnt. I could cut the guy down like butter with a hot knife.How am I supposed to take an Elder Dragon or God of War seriously when I can literally afk through the fight? I get story is story, but if not for a difficulty in the fights how do you get urgency that you’re actually fighting something dangerous?

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@Mil.3562 said:

@Chickenooble.5014 said:I disagree with you guys. I think the story content should have a level of difficulty that provides a challenge to the player. If you, the player, can't figure out how to beat a fight then you die. That's how games should work; you should be rewarded to overcoming a challenge and punished for failing. The punishment in this game isn't drastic, either. You get to restart at checkpoints, you come back with your health, you don't lose items and the bosses seldom recover health in story content. You guys have it easy.

If you're incapable of beating content on your own consider the following:1) Change your build. I can't think of a single class that doesn't have a good build for PvE content. That means you might need to change your weapon set, specializations or skills. When you die and respawn at a checkpoint you can make changes (in most cases) to help overcome obstacles in the current fight.2) Take some instant repair canisters with you. When you die so much that your armor is broken then you're not very effective. Repair before getting back into the fight.3) Party up with some friends. If you can't do it by yourself then bring others along.

I'm not going to "git gud" or anything like that... but, the content isn't that hard. I think some people just need to learn to use all of the tools they have at their disposal and go into fight with the right gear and skill. For what it's worth, I run around in full exotics on all my characters (at best) and change my skills/weapons frequently to match whatever situation I find myself in. You guys should try that sometime.

I disgree with you.

Change my build? Buy repair canisters? Bring along a party? Are we talking about raids here?

IMO, story content are meant to be enjoyable. For an
average player
, and there are many out there, having to die many times in order go through the story is not enjoyment, that's total frustration.

This is supposed to be
story
progression. I want to discover new locations, plots and enjoy the gameplay along the way. Making the LS too challenging makes me want to give up or quickly get over it, too frustrated to care about anything else.

I know there are many elitists out there who wants everything to be challenging and NOTHING to them is ever difficult. Well, good for you. For the rest of us, please let us enjoy our games.

We are talking about the average player. The average player would, and should, die in the fight. Then consider “hey, I need more stamina for dodging, or hey, I should bring more CC, or hey i’m not doing enough damage so lets increase the power or condition damage on my gear”.Yes, instant repair cannisters aren’t a default, you probably only have a stack if you’ve been stockpiling them since 2012.Changing gear to fit content isnt raid level mentality. It’s everyday common sense mentality.When you go jogging do you go in a swimsuit? Or in jogging atire? If you die, yo7 shouldn’t be trying the same thing again and again. You should be looking at “what am i doing wrong, and how do I change that”And part of the living story is the sense of danger and urgency. If the God of War could be felt in 2 minutes by someone in healer gear, would you take that god of war seriously! Like, at all?Correct me if adaptivity isn’t common sense, please.

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I have no problem soloing story instances BUT some fights make me physically tired because they're so tedious. It would be nice if we could choose difficulty because I just want to see what happens in the story. For the amount of effort we have to put into some of these long boss fights, the story instance rewards are actually crap, so I don't really understand why can't we just have an easy mode without rewards or whatever. I'd gladly skip the junk to finish story faster.

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Some of the fights can be tedious. I would not say they are excessively hard though. The Scruffy fight did not need the extra spark phases, that was just repetitive to the extreme.

Story fights should always involve mechanics and difficulty, because that's how you teach players mechanics so that they will be ready for other content. If you don't you end up with SW:TOR where you have players perpetually whining in the Oricon map chat about the Bronthium beast because they managed to get all the way to endgame without ever learning how to use their interrupt skill.

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Much like Vayne said in another topic, I think the best approach to a difficult fight is that it's a puzzle. Just as when playing a game of sudoku you don't try to replace all numbers with 1s, in many fights players are expected to use the tools available to them - using a different weapon, changing traits, picking new utility skills, and so on.

If the game were so easy that someone who doesn't care for any of that could kill any boss in less than 5 minutes, it would not be anywhere close to being a challenge to players who actually do bother with the game's mechanics.

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@Erasculio.2914 said:Much like Vayne said in another topic, I think the best approach to a difficult fight is that it's a puzzle... in many fights players are expected to use the tools available to them - using a different weapon, changing traits, picking new utility skills, and so on.Couldn't agree more. My first grader and I went to his book fair the other day. He asked that I purchase some book about video games. "Ready, Set, Let's Play" is what it's called I think. Just last night he and I were reading through the pages and we read a section about video game bosses. In that, it explained that bosses normally have a weakness or specific point to attack. We also talked about how enemies normally follow patterns and have "tells," like when Bowser is climbing the tower at the end of 3D World. My son understood that. Then I explained to him how people have weaknesses that he'd have to exploit in life, too.

But, yea, to the OP - you need to use everything that you have to get over a fight. If you have a boss that has frequent break bars then you better go with some CC. If you're getting caught in Scruffy 2.0 scatter blasts then you need to find ways to block or reflect damage if you can't dodge.

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Difficulty is an important part of Story telling though.How can the Devs tell a compelling Story if every boss or situation you are supposed to be intimidated by is a total push over and over in 10 seconds?I still remember the Eater of Souls, which I killed in 10-20 seconds without getting hit once or even realising THAT was the big bad of the instance, just to later see the forums erupt in outcry how that guy is unbeatable, and I can't help but feel I was robbed of a cool, memorable boss fight because the guy was just to easy (and has been nerfed since).

I don't think I have actually died in a Story instance more than once since learning the game 5 years ago in some core stories, running around in greens and blues, and even that one death is very, very rare nowdays.

Some of the Story fights that people have been complaining about are complete pushovers if you interact with the game's mechanics, like breaking breakbars or timing dodges right. That is fundamental game knowledge and skill which people should be expected to have by the time they reach a second expansion and Living Story worth of endgame/max level story content.

Was the Scruffy fight difficult? Yes.But if I can solo it on the first try with a 11k HP glass cannon without adjusting my Traits or Utilities in any way, it can't be that bad.If GW2 finally makes people think about their builds and gear in max level open world and story content, then that's a huge plus to me and worthy of praise to the Devs.

Don't try the same thing over and over again and expect different results.Adjust and improve.

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