Defy Conquest a case study in base boss design

@entrailbucket said:

@gamecat235 said:
Those early Galactus events were brutal. Trying to use Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare at just the right moment to one shot Galactus right before you died… that sucked but I’ll say one thing, it was memorable, and challenging, and required strategy.

I loved that. Our alliance was one of (I think) 3 that actually beat it, and we beat it first. I also loved the infamous "you're supposed to lose" Boss Rush.

I'm really glad to see an entire thread of people asking for more difficult/interesting events! I didn't think that was something that players were interested in at this point -- I assume most players just want to get rewards for showing up and doing nothing.

Was Galactus really hard?
I think Civil War was the only one where alliances had trouble finishing both sides.

Maybe my memory is skewed by being in Prime at the time.
Or was that Django still?
I honestly can't remember.

I can't decide if I do or don't like this boss event not even requiring me to switch my team out for the side nodes. Like it's just Wa5p/Hulkoye stomping through these easy nodes with no friction at all.

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/33616/on-galactus-run-1-game-feel-vs-ultron

Enjoy!

That is so weird, I have absolutely no memory of this being so bad.

It was really, really difficult, which made it really, really rewarding to win. 99% of players absolutely HATED it though. I remember it, both because it was so much fun, and because of how much everyone else cried about it.

I think boss events need to have some gimmick to them that is different to your standard event. Its what makes them interesting or challenging. Apocalypse with his tiles (ok modern 5* can wipe him out in one move but back in the day you had to clear his tiles), galactus and ultron with their unique tiles, hell even sinister six had unique powers that meant you had to plan your team to cope.
With there being no specific required characters I've not had to change the team or think at any point, it does mean I've used 5* wasp more over the last few days than at any point since she was released, not that I've fired a power.

so positives - its great to see boss events and the 5* rewards are fantastic. Just please can we have something more fun next time?

It was a good idea but they can't really do anything like that again -- characters are too broken now.

The idea was: Galactus has one giant health bar for your entire alliance. All damage you do to him subtracts off that bar. In each individual fight, you had about 3 turns before he wiped your entire team, so you try to do as much damage as possible before you lose. It was cool and thematic, because a huge team of heroes is fighting against a massive, cosmically powerful threat that they can't beat on their own. (Compare to Galactus now, who gets oneshotted by any decent 5*).

Anyway this went over very, very badly. Mostly it was the hilarious health pack conspiracy theory stuff -- this completely insane, completely untethered-from-reality idea that they make a ton of money from selling health packs, so extra hard events generate tons of profits. This is not even close to true and has never been.

Galactus and Boss Rush were pretty major turning points. After the insane, utterly over the top reactions to those (read that thread -- I like the guy who said this was the worst experience with any form of entertainment that he'd ever had), they really stopped taking risks or doing anything at all interesting with event design.

I don't know why people keep engaging with Sky of Horus even though he's proven himself to be incapable of staying on topic and inevitably blames everything on the playerbase.

In any case, I enjoyed this boss event, but I agree with @dianetics' main point that this event could have been more "special/unique/whatever adjective is appropriate". And every "boss" node having both Kang and Modok plus some random AIM dude kind of defeated the point of a "boss node". As many have stated, it's effectively just another PVE node. In addition to many of the good suggestions already made here, my own humble suggestion is perhaps a boss gauntlet similar to Sinister Six. We could start off with Prime Kang, then Rama Tut, then Immortus. Or maybe even have two boss nodes like Sinister Six, Civil War, Molten Man/Hydro Man to incorporate as many variants of Kang as possible. Maybe we could have a new PVE event that incorporates the Council of Kangs? So many possibilities.