THAB 5/16/19: No Fun Allowed edition (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Saturday, May 18, 2019, 07:18 (2035 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by Ragashingo, Saturday, May 18, 2019, 07:29

On the other hand, there are far too many instances where the boss battles are no fun because players are able to melt bosses within a few seconds. One phasing the Last Wish Ogre? Or Callus? Or outright killing Inverted Spire or Warden of Nothing or the A Garden World bosses before they even get to attack? That’s terribly boring.

I loved the fiery room mechanic of the flaming Servitor, where you have to hide as the various old Prison of Elders bosses are announced and fight you. But now, especially as the more powerful heavy weapons have been introduced, two players Whispering that boss kill it I almost immediately and I never get to play the rest of the Strike.

So, there’s actually two issues here: Poorly designed bosses and overpowered weapons.

If Bungie intends for us to play an entire encounter, it needs to build in damage caps and phases into the bosses. We see these in some places already in more recent content. They need to be extended into the past content. With damage capping health segments a unusually good weapon or strategy won’t ruin the gameplay. Remember, while I like getting rewards from the Crucible, I like playing Crucible much more and a quick end to a game because I was joined into a game that immediately ends in a mercy is pretty much the worst Destiny experience for me. Having a Strike or Raid encounter end almost immediately is equally awful for me. So not all of this can be blamed on guns being too powerful. Boss design needs to be betterment too.

But sometimes weapons are too powerful. The best examples are the Kalli and Shuro Chi encounters. Teammates using Sleeper were able to triple my damage output when I was using my brand new Two-tailed Fox. Boy, that felt crappy. In the early runnings of Last Wish, our lower Light levels basically meant either everyone used Sleeper... or we straight up failed the Shuro Chi stun check and wiped. Destiny is a game where you are encouraged to build your own load out. And yes, the boss can be too tough or a player could bring a totally unsuited load out, but at some point, like when one or two weapons outperform literally everything else by 3x, the guns themselves are also part of the problem.

The Shuro Chi battles was one of the worst encounters in Destiny for me. I was getting one third the boss damage of everyone else so eventually I was assigned to an unlock plate so I’d be useful, and we had the Orpheus Rigs Hunter, so shooting things during the adds phase was also a no-no. The encounter is clever and interesting and fun. I got a lot of enjoyment watching my fire team complete it... (aka, I felt pretty useless in most of the encounter.)

Ultimately, I see these weapon nerfs as necessary, but they are only half the equation. Bosses need better design too. Look at the Eater of Worlds Hydra. There was some straight up DPSing required, but destroying its weak spots each round did not require DPS. It required sustained damage of any amount. Slow firing, high burst damage weapons were actually a liability. There’s no need for Bungie to entirely eliminate DPS phases in its boss designs, but it’s better when beating bosses requires a more diverse weapon selection.

Nerfing these weapons isn’t so much a walk back to mediocrity as it is past encounters unfortunately getting designed around just a few overpowered weapons. Weapons wouldn’t feel ineffective if bosses weren’t so tanky that they required the very top tier weapons to kill.