Descent bosses should not be skippable!

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

How it should be:

Each boss should drop one Chest Key, guaranteed. The two non-random chests are locked, you need a Chest Key to open one; however, you don't need to use the Chest Key from the same zone. You could, for example, kill the cobra boss in the very first area, skip the first chests, kill the second area boss then get both of the second area chests.

Thus, if you want to nab a particular chest before beating a particular boss, you could do that too, just skip a chest earlier.

Great idea here. Make it happen GGG!

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

How it should be:

Each boss should drop one Chest Key, guaranteed. The two non-random chests are locked, you need a Chest Key to open one; however, you don't need to use the Chest Key from the same zone. You could, for example, kill the cobra boss in the very first area, skip the first chests, kill the second area boss then get both of the second area chests.

Thus, if you want to nab a particular chest before beating a particular boss, you could do that too, just skip a chest earlier.

Yes! This approach sounds really fun and will encourage even more strategic play in regards to bosses and which chests to pick.

I think at the very least bosskilling should be much more rewarding. A bosskill should give like 40% of a level.

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KoTao wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

How it should be:

Each boss should drop one Chest Key, guaranteed. The two non-random chests are locked, you need a Chest Key to open one; however, you don't need to use the Chest Key from the same zone. You could, for example, kill the cobra boss in the very first area, skip the first chests, kill the second area boss then get both of the second area chests.

Thus, if you want to nab a particular chest before beating a particular boss, you could do that too, just skip a chest earlier.

Great idea here. Make it happen GGG!

I really like that idea too. Bosses would be more important, but you'd still have the possibility to skip them. That update would also allow you to skip a set of chests, if you don't care about their content, to save a key for another level (adding more strategy into the Descent races...)

A criticism about the chest keys: compared to killing the boss to get the chest, keys create two separate optimization problems, but they are both one-dimensional and easy to solve.
1) Gather keys from the easiest bosses [optimize against boss difficulty]
2) Use keys on the best chests [optimize against chest usefulness]
The only constraint tying them together is the keys have to be gathered before they're used. If early bosses tend to be easier than later bosses anyway then that's not much of a constraint, however. While the keys technically create additional options, they simplify the optimization process. So the expectation is that they would decrease actual variety.

Also the keys idea requires significantly stronger global balance across chest quality and boss difficulties. They can't have a good chest guarded by a strong boss to balance it, for instance; because players would just get a key from an easier boss instead. IMO, it is an unrealistic balance goal to achieve that degree of balance across the entire race.

Therefore, it would be better to have the boss guard it's own chest, not a key which could be used on any future chest.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

1) Gather keys from the easiest bosses [optimize against boss difficulty]
2) Use keys on the best chests [optimize against chest usefulness]
The only constraint tying them together is the keys have to be gathered before they're used. If early bosses tend to be easier than later bosses anyway then that's not much of a constraint, however.

The first rule of racing is to run past all the easy crap and only spend your time on the higher-level, more-XP monsters. The first-level cobra is not an optimized boss to get a key from; the XP is shit, so is the loot, and actually being geared for him means wasting attacks on bugs, which is definitely bad news, and he's a pretty tough fight naked. Your entire thinking is backwards; optimization here is skipping as many early bosses as possible, and including as many late bosses as possible.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The first rule of racing is to run past all the easy crap and only spend your time on the higher-level, more-XP monsters. The first-level cobra is not an optimized boss to get a key from; the XP is shit, so is the loot, and actually being geared for him means wasting attacks on bugs, which is definitely bad news, and he's a pretty tough fight naked. Your entire thinking is backwards; optimization here is skipping as many early bosses as possible, and including as many late bosses as possible.

Oh really? thats the point of the race? to skip monsters and more important the bosses?

So ask yourself a thing..why there are bosses in this race? Give me a good reason about it..
Wouldn't be better not having at all bosses till the last level of the race? That would make more sense to you? Would be amazing if you could just RUN the whole levels of the race and then make your fight to the one-last boss?


2 solutions to the problem:
Mandaroty boss kills and Random stash-boxes so that no "cheating" will be with the spreadsheets.

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Kalidor wrote:

So ask yourself a thing..why there are bosses in this race? Give me a good reason about it..

While I do agree with you, some of the bosses can actually be quite difficult to skip (and even harder to kill), e.g., the Perpetus boss. So they do still act as obstacles, some more than others (and some not at all).
But I agree, as it is now, bosses are to be skipped and that is kind of sad. On the other hand, if all bosses were mandatory, the race should be extended to at least 75 minutes.

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Kalidor wrote:

..Random stash-boxes so that no "cheating" will be with the spreadsheets.

Calling it "cheating" is not only harsh.. It is wrong! As was stated in the original announcement of the Descent races:

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Chris wrote:

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TheTrueYako wrote:

Are you guys gonna post the chest contents ahead of time so we can work on builds before the races start, or is the first race gonna be a huge surprise?

Nope, you have to work them out and keep track of them as a community :)

It is the idea that players learn more about the Descent world every time they play.

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Kalidor wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The first rule of racing is to run past all the easy crap and only spend your time on the higher-level, more-XP monsters. The first-level cobra is not an optimized boss to get a key from; the XP is shit, so is the loot, and actually being geared for him means wasting attacks on bugs, which is definitely bad news, and he's a pretty tough fight naked. Your entire thinking is backwards; optimization here is skipping as many early bosses as possible, and including as many late bosses as possible.

Oh really? thats the point of the race? to skip monsters and more important the bosses?

So ask yourself a thing..why there are bosses in this race? Give me a good reason about it..
Wouldn't be better not having at all bosses till the last level of the race? That would make more sense to you? Would be amazing if you could just RUN the whole levels of the race and then make your fight to the one-last boss?


2 solutions to the problem:
Mandaroty boss kills and Random stash-boxes so that no "cheating" will be with the spreadsheets.

The post you quoted is the reason I created this thread, the only way to win races is if you skip the most content possible... I was hoping the Descent races changed it a little, but it seems to have made it even worse.

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VRShiva wrote:

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Kalidor wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The first rule of racing is to run past all the easy crap and only spend your time on the higher-level, more-XP monsters. The first-level cobra is not an optimized boss to get a key from; the XP is shit, so is the loot, and actually being geared for him means wasting attacks on bugs, which is definitely bad news, and he's a pretty tough fight naked. Your entire thinking is backwards; optimization here is skipping as many early bosses as possible, and including as many late bosses as possible.

Oh really? thats the point of the race? to skip monsters and more important the bosses?

So ask yourself a thing..why there are bosses in this race? Give me a good reason about it..
Wouldn't be better not having at all bosses till the last level of the race? That would make more sense to you? Would be amazing if you could just RUN the whole levels of the race and then make your fight to the one-last boss?


2 solutions to the problem:
Mandaroty boss kills and Random stash-boxes so that no "cheating" will be with the spreadsheets.

The post you quoted is the reason I created this thread, the only way to win races is if you skip the most content possible... I was hoping the Descent races changed it a little, but it seems to have made it even worse.

Bingo.

When I was replying to Polaris in this thread, I wasn't trying to say that this is the way it should be. I was saying that's the way it is currently, and thus the behavior Polaris was describing wouldn't be exploited, because it's suboptimal anyway.

I want to say that I emphatically do not believe that Descent bosses should be unskippable; at the same time, I do not believe that the optimal play should always be to skip Descent bosses. I think it should be an actual decision, based on the current circumstances of the race thus far, one which would take skill and experience to make the right choice, and could not be answered with a simple rubric.