Why is astrogha such a pain in the ass? And other thoughts

Marco wrote:Since its inception, MXL was all about endgame and ridiculous difficulty, borderline masochism (less so in 2019). The argument of "I havent seen this in any other arpg" can be applied nearly to the entirety of MXL. Since you've been around, where have you seen things like 1000 attribute challenges, startled witches, purify, heroic shields, detonators, firebloods, vizjun, toraja, ureh, k3k, bremm, ureh, dunc, jday, laz, qt, astro, bpr, etc? I don't think atypical challenges are a synonym of "bad design".

After getting my ass kicked several times by archbishop lazarus and getting frustrated beyond belief, I just have one question for you. Do you hope this mod will ever get a standalone game or just fade into obscurity? I can certainly tell you that if you maintain this borderline masochism type of design, this mod will never find a market large enough to be profitable to develop. I consider myself a very versatile gamer and pretty much open minded to all kind of crazy shit. I played stuff like borderlands, almost all major diablo 2 mods, most arpgs, some mobas and even at a professional level for a very short time and I can tell you median xl is the kind of game I wouldn't invest an extensive amount of time in due how empty I would feel after I hit certain walls in this game.

Why is ureh a thing? If your class doesn't rely on defense (but rather pure ehp from other sources), you're fucked.
Why is soul of wrath a thing? Same thing as above.
Why does archbishop has so much life? He used to be... dare I say, reasonable? And for one of the most iconic uberquests in the game, it has several mechanical flaws and bugs.
Why is kabraxis 20 times harder for melee characters? And it's not like he has the same kit against any build. He specifically has a skill against melee targets for some reason. Why?
Why is uldyssian almost impossible for melee characters?

There's absolutely no reason for some of those things to exist at all. I feel like feedback is not being heard and such this is a dying mod and the dead economy proves it. The game doesn't have to be impossible. There's so much to do in this mod and I believe the absurd difficulty or simply impossibility of some uberquests just hurt it. Usually, in any arpg, I would have rerolled like 5 times, leveled to (almost) max, delve into economy, farm some specific stuff like trophies. But considering I'm stuck on the only character I have invested everything in, I feel like there's no point in rerolling because I know I'll hit the exact wall as in the other character I have and feel just as disappointed.

Just my 2 cents, I don't mean to be offensive by this if it sounds as such.

Anything you cant kill is just bugged, tell Marco to fix it.

Still waiting on the maths patch so I can finish my calc hw

Just because you've installed the mod and played it before does not mean you're entitled to beat it. If you've played since 2008 than you should know that you are intended to die... ALOT. Learn from your mistakes and think outside of the box.

And bish i spent 7 hours mapping out fauzt in 2008 version cause there were no docs or maps and you crying about spending an hour on one boss

Personally I let Astrogha bury me near off screen before attacking behind her near the other side of the screen. For melee, I would do the same with sone kind of hit and run strategy. This is tedious, but there are way worse designs in the later parts. (Uldyssian takes forever because sponge, Void because last fight because timer, Laz because timer and run through Vizjun every time)

Astro can be frustrating sometimes. But, tbh, it's not the worst fight in the game. Imo, Median XL isn't designed to be played in a one dimensional build that can beat everything. In a previous season I had a hard time with Astro on my 2hand axe barb. This season, I played an overkill Barb... Astro dies fast.
On the other hand Belial was a pain to my throw barb to beat because of how the fight is designed. On my bowazon its a matter of minutes with less gear. More and more I think that you need to be more pluri dimensional with a char... playing multiple specs if you don't want to take one hour or more to kill a certain boss.

I was offtopic and people got the wrong idea. I just meant to quote marco in hope he would read it and answer my question. I'm just really curious what his opinion on this is. And if you cared to read, you would be curious too. Do you think median xl will survive in today's arpg market? You really need to allow your game to be a LITTLE more casual so people that invest a shitton of time (happens to be myself as well) can actually see results and not sell signets to buy the charm they can't farm. That's so lame.

For comparison, I have played almost all major arpgs, path of exile included. In poe, I have managed to beat pretty much ALL content without breaking a sweat. Things like uber elder DEATHLESS on a 3k hp character. It actually seems like a joke to me. And you know what? I'm considered the top 1% or something as player that can complete the endgame content. Now, I can't complete a good chunk of median xl's endgame content, despite farming like a madman and really trying. Where does that put me? More importantly, where does that put the other large majority of players?

The point is, the game is too difficult to live as a standalone game and you need to face this reality if you EVER had hopes of creating such game. As of now, it runs on a 20 y/o game with (almost) obsolete graphics, bugs, rigid mechanics and broken stuff like pathfinding. So yes, median xl will die because it barely gains any new players compared to games to come (I'm gonna switch to borderlands 3 soon and then poe 4.0 comes out and hopefully a decent diablo 4). So yea, this is your game.

Istaryu wrote:Anything you cant kill is just bugged, tell Marco to fix it.

There are obvious bugs with archbishop lazarus. For example, he sometimes teleports inside you and you can't move and you end up dying if you don't have lightning speed reflexes to teleport away, but that's assuming you got stuck in the first place fast enough. Also, stuff like hidden frozen orb traps shouldn't be in his encounter at all.

Also, what about dimensional labyrinth? Do you advocate for a chunk of content to be viable only for certain builds? What the fuck kind of thinking is that? That's why this mod will not mature to compete with big arpgs. Because it fucks with the players too often.

But yea, tElL mARco To fIx iT. Good argument.

As a side note, I managed to kill astrogha, that's not a problem. He's very easily actually once you learn the fight and have the necessary tools. The topic deviated, that's all. As I said, archbishop lazarus is not about having the tools or learning the fight.

MagnuS wrote:On the other hand Belial was a pain to my throw barb to beat because of how the fight is designed. On my bowazon its a matter of minutes with less gear. More and more I think that you need to be more pluri dimensional with a char... playing multiple specs if you don't want to take one hour or more to kill a certain boss.

Imagine telling your game's players to respec if they can't complete a fight. That sounds like the kind of developer who doesn't bother to balance anything. I'm saying this because a lot of stuff remained unchanged over recent patches for no reason, despite feedback. I don't mean to be offensive, just how I see things.