Greetings fellow Guardians,
So something that has always bothered me a bit are people who accuse us of only complaining about Destiny. I've said numerous times, if you're going to critique or criticize something, you should also be willing to offer up suggestion on how it could be better or solutions to problems.
To that end, there are many of us who do and so I'm going to create another tag for posts that offer up ideas to improve both current and future versions of Destiny so that if Bungie devs so desires, they can find them all in one place. I encourage any Guardians to use it and would only ask that you keep it for suggestions and ideas for improvements and not just to call out what you think needs fixed. The new tag will be #destinyideashop.
Today I would also like to offer up to the devs two takes on what is wrong with boss battles in Destiny and how they could be made better going forward. This came about as a conversation I was having with @ll Shadow about [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/149529485/0/0]@Anarchy's review of the twitch stream this week.[/url] We both have ideas on how to improve them, either would improve the experiences, but it's cool how they riff off each other.
[quote][b]ll Shadow[/b]: I unlike others, enjoy that there will be another "longwinded" person adding comments and insight for me to read and enjoy, whilst commenting on it.
I actually enjoyed the look of the new strike, my biggest hope is that they go back and reinvent the old tired strikes to be more in line with this one. Especially the part where the bosses move around a lot, which is a huge nice change.
[b]Lost Sols[/b]: I think that's why the Archon Priest was generally everyone's favorite vanilla strike boss. He was the only one with any real unpredictability.
[b]ll Shadow[/b]: I think the Archon Priest would benefit greatly from an inability to go and hide back in that entrance cavern, It would add the hectic mad dashes back into it, and it would be truly a good strike then, or at least 50% better.
The only one i can’t see them changing for the better would be Omnigul, as those witches are just brutal and that room is so tiny.
Any strike we currently have could benefit from some tweaking i will list examples below.
Our old friend Valus and his strike could use a bunch of work, like the beginning, and that room everyone just runs through, link 3 random enemies to the door so you cannot just run through the first part, in the next area make the Goliath able to float up into the commanders area so people cannot just hide up there, also add in Cabal on Interceptors causing trouble. Once you get down to Valus himself I’m not sure how to improve him, he is just boring.
Most of the Nexus is rather good actually, the end boss leaves a lot to be desired. The Nexus isn’t any different than a large Hydra, add some panels that pop open and fire off rockets, add in some rotating slap rifles to him so he can shoot people behind him, adds 3 layers of interesting to that end boss.
Phogoth should literally throw thrall at you, cursed thrall too, it would add an interesting mechanic there, imagine minding your own business and then suddenly a Thrall just smacks right into you, also he should have the ability to pick you up and throw you at other guardians, makes for something a little more interesting no?
Sepiks the same he needs MORE, more movement areas, possibly his blast having more than one setting, like Nova bomb does, fast, triple and massive. Along with the addition of more of the HoW Shank types in the strike with some rocket shanks! The Walker also needs to wander around the map, and deploy a variety of the aforementioned shanks.
Bingo Bango Bongo improved strikes
[b]Lost Sols[/b]: Here's my take on the Archon Priest and the entrance cavern.
If they just made the boss fights about fighting a boss, it wouldn't be an issue. You could block off the camping spots and make people move around rooms/areas exchanging fire with bosses and counter-maneuvering. The problem is that, rather than create bosses that are challenging on their own, Bungie rely on endless adds to create difficulty; which turns any kind of pitched roving battle into insti-death from snipers or shielded majors.
Let's face it; all the actual bosses would be cheese without the endless cheap spawn around them.
That is Destiny's biggest design flaw in regards to boss encounters in my opinion. Hell, even raids it's the same. Were we really fighting Crota? Not really. We were fighting everything else and standing on a ledge to lower his shields. One person "fought" him... And Crota was on his knees.
That's bulls**t design if you ask me.
We should all have been fighting him. Using stun grenades to slow him, suppression to cut short his ability attacks, etc. I wouldn't have a problem with him at various points calling in help, but the whole fight shouldn't be filled with spawn.
It's also why PoE ended up so cheap and boring in my opinion. It could have been a really tactical arena battle against a powerful boss or a team of 3-5 enemies that were cunning and worked together. Instead it's more endless spawn with cheap shielded bullet sponge adds.[/quote]
Now from watching the new strike reveal, I will give Bungie credit for realizing there is a problem and attempting to improve boss fights. The switch to the twins working as a tag-team and moving about during fights is a marked improvement, but until they solve the issue of balance between the amount of adds spawning and the bosses ability to fire indefinitely, people will camp entrance rooms or find safe spots.
To that end (and this has bothered me since the Halo days), I think enemy weapons should function with the same rules as ours. I've always hated the enemy-doesn't-have-to-reload mechanic. It's cheap.
If you want to create real pitched battles, you can make enemies tough, but if you just make them play by the same rules, it would lead to more real fire fights and less hiding and taking pot-shots. Enemies already will take cover when damaged, why not have them do the same to reload?
And going back to the fighting bosses and not adds. How much more fun would the Archon Priest be if there weren't all the shielded Shanks, invisible swords, snipers and Thrall, but instead he teleported more, was more agile and had a few more abilities like a stun or could grab a Guardian and throw them, etc.
Again, I'm not saying remove all adds completely. They can definitely have their place in battles, but they shouldn't be the focus of the fights (especially vs raid bosses) and right now they demand most of our attention while we whittle away at the bosses in-between.
That's my two cents on endgame boss fights. Thank-you and as always, see you all amongst the stars.
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Bump of astonishment. Somehow this is the first time I've seen this post. Nice idea