I made this point earlier. Speed running is clearly a community supported mode of play and the idea that the dev team would ignore this is insane, which means they aren’t. Perhaps an attempt to close the RNG nature of speed runs these walls appear on the surface to solve an issue, they do not do it adequately to overcome the loss of immersion and cost of tactical freedom that general players wish to enjoy.
The difference is that these arena’s are setup to be an arena, they have all the hallmarks of an Arena and they serve the narrative purpose of an arena. Mini boss fights serve a different narrative purpose, a sudden unscripted and disruptive encounter inserted into the existing state of play. They are awesome, terrifying, and relatively unpredictable, the ability to flee from them to a better position, or until you have the right resources or until you can escape is all part of the intended narrative and game play experience. Now they’re not, now it’s just an arena but badly designed and randomly inserted into the game.
It is an arbitrary solution to a problem that doesn’t effect anybody which detracts from the original intended purpose of the game mechanic.
I know the dev team have had this discussion and I’m rooting for cooler heads to prevail because the idea that a great narrative and game play mechanic is a reduced in its impact and scope because someone is angry that speed runners get to much loot is sad.
I’ve been thinking about this and it brings up another point. Some builds favor clutches, they shine best when they’re making a desperate attempt to res an ally or just hold time until someone else can generate some heat or ammo, pulling and holding hordes, chip damaging chaos warriors, 0 damage when hooked or assasined whatever. By eliminating this mode of play the team has literally devalued a bunch of already devalued skills, traits, stats and builds.
clutching is far from eliminated… There’s tons of opportunities to clutch that don’t involve bosses already. Plus in a boss fight the first round of respawned teammates is usually before the wall, and the clutcher can just backtrack a little ways when people die to make them respawn before the wall.
flinlock your methods are way too advanced for the average clutcher!
lol
edit: actually i do this without noticing because i’m already retreating far behind because either the boss or horde is on my ass when everyone’s dying
The fact that some options are still on the table does not change the fact that many have been removed. However I really think the strength in my argument comes from the arbitrary ‘arena’ enforcement, breaking the original narrative and mechanical intent of a boss. It is clear that fleeing from a boss was an intended mode of play but that its exploitative use to farm loot is causing someone sleepless nights.
… how is that clear? The two slowest bosses already had boss walls, which seems to imply that fleeing from bosses should not be an intended mode of play… In V1 that would have been sufficient, but with all the powers we have now fleeing from even the fast bosses became a viable strategy, and one that doesn’t really require a lot of skill aside from maybe clever maneuvering once tied up teammates are reached. I mean I play shade with DnD and I would just run forward holding block and not even bother to look behind me and nothing would ever hurt me, an occasional hit or two that was easily blocked. Hold block and W and then ult when teammates are reached, nothing “clutch” about that.
Clutching used to be a lot more badass, it meant being the last one standing and actually killing everything before running ahead to rescue your teammates. Boss walls restore that.
The were only recently added as well, in response to speed running.
This is bad game design and enforcing another (lets say arguably) bad game design to cull the power of the previous one isn’t a step in the right direction.
If you wanna be a bad ass and wear aviators or whatever nobody is going to stop you, play true solo whatever however the alternative is not true. Want to be a baddass and shield kite the entire map nope to bad we changed our mind about how the game should be played because a select few people looked like they were having to much fun.
A few months after launch maybe 1,1?, I remember them adding them and thinking they were a dumb idea then. See the issue for me is I personally don’t get impacted by them a great deal it is frustrating when it happens but its not like it is a common run ruiner as such. However looking at the design and seeing a good mechanical tool being used in it’s narrative context being ruined for weak sauce reasons kinda sucks.
The Troll and Stormfiend walls were there since launch (and so was the discussion). Troll even had nasty bugs where he got stuck between animations and couldn’t be harmed, so the wall effectively completely prevented the run from continuing (fixed in 1.0.4 and later). The walls just usually spawn far enough that you don’t notice them. Just to confirm this, I even scanned through the patchnotes, all the way through to the Beta. No mention of boss walls before 1.2.
From another thread on this topic. This makes more sense. A Boss wall as inelegant as it is may be worthwhile to fix a breakable,broken spawning system/ai director. It’s still inadequate.
I still don’t think it’s worthwhile at all. Leaving everything alive on the map and simply running ahead is always going to break the AI. But, again, for most players this is simply irrelevant. Novice players don’t have the skills, expert players do but can stomp the bosses. Intermediate players might sometimes opt to try to speedfarm maps but they’d be naturally giving up loot quality (no books) for quantity. It’s already a self-regulating system.
I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with, and thanks for spotting that comment and sharing it, but I’m fairly well convinced that they’re working hard to solve a fringe issue and that their fixes risk being more detrimental to the player experience than the problem they’re trying to solve.