Was playing game on veteran, average level was something like 13. We just defeated Burblespue, it was a tough battle, as it often is. Two of our party was incapacitated by his last tornado. Before that tornado resolved, the remaining two were incapacitated by a Leech and Gutterunner. Game over.
My suggestion is rather simple: after a boss is killed, don’t spawn any specials (elites are fine) until 10-20 seconds after the boss’s abilities resolve. A good boss fight brings you to the brink of defeat, but what I experienced didn’t feel like that.
Everyone I was playing with logged off after that. The words exchanged before logging off was “That was Bullshit”. We had played a map before this, and we probably would have played another after – because finding a team you can work with is hard. Anything that ends a team (this isn’t the same thing as ending a match) is kind of a problem for a game.
Experientially, this didn’t feel like a defeat we had earned, rather this felt like arbitrary bullshit, because the specials spawned, effectively instantly and began their incaps. This wasn’t an issue of a party making mistakes and suffering for it. This wasn’t an issue of missing the tell-tale signs (i.e. the audio cues that a special is in play) … none of those played. This was a sudden intervention that turned the experience of a hard fought victory to something of “disgust”.
I’ve put a few hundred hours into the original; I bought all the DLC; I have given copies of the game to at least six of my friends. I try to work with new players and get them involved in a fun, but unforgiving game.
There’s something I know about myself – and this is half true of my friends as well. I can only put a game down in “disgust” so many times before I never pick it up again. I recognize there are a bunch of changes coming in the patch – but, in its current state, I would not recommend this game to my friends… and it’s these “slightly too frequent” experiences of ill-timed, arbitrary defeat (more than random crashes) that bother me.
I realize more of this is experiential than pure suggestion, but as qualitative data goes, I just wanted to share this experience with ya’ll.