why does one need to be lucky to fight a boss?

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HeaT_
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as the title states, why does one need to be lucky to fight a boss?

for example, scos, lab, and sam bosses all are gated by rng, particularly socs and the lab have multiple layers of rng.

seems to be the antithesis of the general design philosophy of the game? the majority of the bosses you can fight if you meet the required level to enter the portal. so why the exception with the ones i mentioned and why are some of them HEAVILY gated by rng.

i'd also propose thinking about whether this these are good design principles?

i'd like to hear people's thoughts on this (some devs would be nice too).
Rusev
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Well starting with far BrotherLaz boss was design as final boss before and the charm was totaly overpowered before and then they balansed like 5 times.Samaael was done like the ultimate boss and the rewards was very gamechanger before and after they balnsed the rewards and the boss(he is not poison immune for example).So the problem is the reward they drop not the lucky.Do you want server full of Voidtaffs and Harbringer swords.There was alot explots with this items as well in the past.
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Elendilli
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I believe the difficulty aspect or approach of Median XL is a result of the game (Diablo II) being very old or in other words the game is gated by engine limitations. Thus, Median XL's or originally Brother Laz's approach to counter these limitations was a form of artificial difficulty (Heroic Shield, one-shotty bosses, bullshit normal monsters) which probably feels very uncanny compared to other ARPGs that most people are more familiar with. Since Sigma came out, the Devs have been rectifying a lot of the pre-sigma forms of artificial difficulty and mechanics. A lot of these changes are a result of the devs rewriting the engine which now allows them to incorporate things that were not previously possible like completely new zones to house ubers/bosses instead of re-using Elite-Zones or reworked outdated uber bosses like Astrogha who previously had a literal one-shot ice attack and finally the implementation of "quick cast" this very season.

I also think they deliberately keep some of the artificial difficulty/mechanics on purpose but mostly towards the end of the game (Labyrinth, Samael, Deimoss etc...) because in some way it's what makes median xl Median XL. Whether you like/hate/enjoy it, I personally think it makes this game more interesting because of bullshit challenges like the ones I described, there will always be a small handful of players who try to tackle this type of impossible content and it makes for a very enjoyable show when somebody pushes a character to its absolute limit and overcomes the impossible dogshit towards the end of the game.

Lastly, as a result of impossible-tier content existing and when new content, skills and updates are released into the game, power creep will allow more players who previously were not able to experience specific end-game content before, to be able to experience it because that's just how power creep works. An example of this is when Fauzt used to be the area everyone aimed to be able to farm. Now, it's Scosglen. It's also the same for bosses like Samael who has become significantly easier not only due to balance changes and nerfs, but it's also a result of power creep from new skills and items.
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whist
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some players manage to beat the content you mentioned, more than once, with consistency. I guess they're just really lucky?
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whist wrote:some players manage to beat the content you mentioned, more than once, with consistency. I guess they're just really lucky?



They are really lucky, he';s not talking about the difficulty to do said boss, but more like finding those treasure boxes of item design etc to be purely up to RNG, for example found them all in 4 runs; vs once 37 runs. This used to be the way with trophies too; except then the 20 charms=fragment was added to avoid the annoying design of it. I propose maybe at least item design in cube alone+transmute=new item design that ISNT able to be cubed again; still RNG, less RNG...

But then again item drops are also RNG...so in reality its designed into this game; its either for you or not.
HeaT_
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whist wrote:some players manage to beat the content you mentioned, more than once, with consistency. I guess they're just really lucky?


what i'm asking is why do i need to be lucky to ACCESS the content, not doing/completing it as what you are referring to. (sometimes needing multiple layers of luck because of layered rng)

for example, i don't need any luck to go fight laz. i can go to viz-jun and enter the portal and fight him. this is not the case with sam, scos boss, deimoss, and seems to be the antithesis of the design philosophy that is laid out previously (all other bosses).

i'm also not referring to difficulty like others have mentioned and what maybe you are insinuating. there is a difference between something being difficult, and access to something being gated by RNG.

i can rephrase the question as - why does one need to be lucky to access content? or even why is content gated by rng/heavy rng?
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berry117
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ITS MY CONTENT AND I WANT IT NOW!
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Lynderika
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Sam taha requirement is terrible and I've been against it since forever, it literally just say "ssf not allowed" and nothing else. I mean... If you level in fauzt to 140, you get what, 3-6 tahas? bruh
For me it should need fauzt runes to unlock the worldstone shard, then every attempts is just sigs.

Labs... Has been complained on since forever. There has been a post on it recently, viewtopic.php?f=4&t=79570
Playing duo or in a group help a lot improve fun in there, since it gives more riftstones drop and thing are overall easier to deal with.

I'm not sure as to what you're refering with scosglen though, it has no special access, just random drops, which is the same as everywhere else. A lootbox and an enemy death are pretty much the same thing in a sense. The charm can take pretty long yeah, but the player is expected to spend lot of time in scos I suppose.
HeaT_
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Lynderika wrote:I'm not sure as to what you're refering with scosglen though, it has no special access, just random drops, which is the same as everywhere else. A lootbox and an enemy death are pretty much the same thing in a sense. The charm can take pretty long yeah, but the player is expected to spend lot of time in scos I suppose.


unless i'm misunderstanding, in order to fight the new scos boss you need the charm and the reality piercer, which requires luck 1 = corrupted druid spawns, luck 2 = design drop, luck 3 = correct design drop because it can drop duplicates.

honestly i like the idea of gathering the ingredients for the designs but getting lucky twofold for them to drop seems to be rng for rng sake.

in terms of lab, i feel like the design progression is inherently flawed, similar to path of exile's map system. the reason is upon success you can actually regress in progression. e.g. i can successfully clear a rift/map then be arbitrarily forced to regress to a lower tier. that's counter to how things generally work when you think of "success" or "completing" something.

if i remember correctly torchlight 2's map system had it right, i think you were able to purchase the tiers you wanted, which never stalled your progression and give you agency to choose, deterministic in a sense, but there were still rng aspects to it that made it interesting.
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whist
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HeaT_ wrote:
whist wrote:some players manage to beat the content you mentioned, more than once, with consistency. I guess they're just really lucky?

what i'm asking is why do i need to be lucky to ACCESS the content, not doing/completing it as what you are referring to. (sometimes needing multiple layers of luck because of layered rng)

understood, I misread what you were saying.