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6/26/2015 3:33:09 PM
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The Definition of Insanity...
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It's a cliche and not even really true, but it is an apt description of the Skolas fight. After banging my head against the wall for 3 hours last night, I just couldn't take it anymore. I'm not the type to normally come to the forums to complain, but I feel it's warranted this time.
For the record, I have beaten Skolas twice: once on the Arc burn week, and once last week (with a Warlock and Titan respectively). So I've beaten him both pre and post patch. Not to mention many hours of trying to do it both pre and post patch and failing. I know the strategy, I know the mechanics, I have all the right weapons, and I don't suck. I'm no MLG pro or anything, but I'm far from casual. I have no trouble completing any endgame content in Destiny.
My issue isn't that the fight is hard, it is and it should be. My issue is that it isn't fun, it's frustrating. As an MMO veteran, I welcome the use of mechanics instead of bullet sponge bosses. I love that you have to communicate and work as a team to complete it. However, I feel that there is just too much for most teams to handle. Consider all the things to worry about: Skolas, the adds, the Devouring Essence, the Mines, the modifiers, and level disadvantage. None of these is any more concerning than any other, my opinion (and I stress MY OPINION) is that there are simply too many things to worry about for the majority of players, especially on teams with inconsistent rosters.
The factor that annoys me the most is the level disadvantage. We had to deal with this during hard Crota as well, and even though that wasn't terribly difficult, I still feel it was a cop out. It's an artificial difficulty multiplier, and completely uncreative on Bungie's part. With such drastic penalties for being "underleveled" for a fight, like those that exist in Destiny as a whole, there really is no reason for any endgame encounter to be at a higher level that we are. I think even at level 34 it would still require teamwork and communication to defeat Sokolas and deal with all the other mechanics, but it would remove a lot of the frustration of being two-shotted by a random add. I think this would allow many more teams to complete the activity while not making it so easy that it's a joke.
There is also the issue with the rewards. For such a grueling fight, there is really very little reward. You are not guaranteed any gear or weapons, and the treasure chests are no different than those in any other PoE encounter. For going 9-0 in Trials you are guaranteed an elemental primary, an exotic, and whatever other goodies you get out of the Lighthouse chest. It is very hard to go 9-0, so those rewards are appropriate. Defeating Skolas is also very hard, but the rewards are lackluster at best. Considering the way the rewards are currently in PoE, there really is no reason for the fight to be that difficult.
There will be those that say the fight is fine as is, that the level disadvantage is just a part of the fight and we should just deal with it. I also expect a fair amount of "git gud scrub" and "filthy casual" remarks from the uncomfortably high percentage of immature people on the forums. My counter to the former is that Vault of Glass was hard, and fun, and rewarding, and there was no level disadvantage. The raid was level 30, and as long as you were level 30 you were on an even playing field. To the latter I will simply ignore you as I ignore the opinions of anyone not able to hold an adult conversation.
I know Bungie will not change the Skolas encounter any further, and this is not some ultimatum that if they do not concede to my wishes I will quit the game.. I love this game, and I will keep playing it. My only goals in writing this are to vent my own frustration and hopefully find some other Guardians that feel similarly. If Bungie, by some random act of the universe, did read this, I would only ask that you consider those not it the upper echelon of gaming prowess when designing endgame activities. I am an MMO veteran so I understand that those types of activities should be challenging, but they should also be attainable by more than a small percentage of the player base.
If you have no trouble beating Skolas three times every week, good for you. I truly am glad you have the skill and consistent team needed to do that. This post is not for you, and I hope you understand that in the end this is a game, and it should be fun. Right now, in my opinion, Skolas is not fun, it is a hot mess of frustration. I have a feeling I'm not alone in that opinion.
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I agree with most of the things you said. Making an encounter hard with doing it 1 level higher is just not make sense. It feels me like the Bungie don't know how to do a hard encounter and they just put 1 level higher mobs around. Skolas fight is not so hard actually but it takes too long to finish it anyway. The only coordination for Skolas fight is just telling how many seconds left for the debuff on you and it's switching line. And if you do it correct the rest is about just killing 1 level higher mobs which I believe no need any coordination or team work to do it so. All you do is taking cover and shooting anything moves you see and avoid captains rushing you. You can even talk about your life when killing ads and maybe you can say your teammates " captain watch out! " meanwhile. =) Despite I love the game how it runs. With all selection of weapons, using supers, jumping, damage types etc. all of those make you play more variant way. So it just fun even if you just kill mobs around. I already have everything from skolas 3 exotic weapons, legendary weapons with burn. I even can't use my etheric lights anymore, nothing left to upgrage. But I keep playing 'cause the gameplay is fun itself. And now can't wait for the The Taken King to be released. Sorry for grammer mistakes and spelling errors if any..
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I fell for the b8 i expected a vaas montenegro reference (Far cry 3)
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Not alone man.
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This was a topic right back at the start of Destiny. Good times.
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skolas is a squid
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The definition of insanity is = Destiny
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Insanity - Destiny's Unbalanced PvP
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Agree with all of this whole heartedly. I have done skolas on all three characters each week since inception. I have done once this week as well. Now, the fact is I have probably done it out of nothing else to do in game, not for fun by any stretch of the imagination. There is nothing at all enjoyable about this encounter. From reward to the fight. And not one thing will be done about it. The Lighthouse is for the elite or carried alike. You cannot get carried in Skolas. You must rely on great teammates and for the most part we all have to leverage LFG. That is a complete crapshoot. At best. Yet the reward for and hour or twos time spent is forgettable. But at the same time what reward could we expect besides guaranteed elemental drops? Thanks OP for taking the time to post this. Great call out and definitely something I hope gets addressed.
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I feel you. The fight is very epic for the level you'd assume the difficulty to be. It seems "Bungie" ramped the fight up a bit. 28 pie to 32 Poe seems a stretch, I can only imagine the after.... The game in itself seems very unbalanced. Not fun at all, I play games for the enjoyment .......not for the work involved. TTK will not be something I buy,..it took a lot for me to buy this game and the season pass, but after less than 48 hours played an almost to max level, I do not see this game As a sport but rather a geR chase. This mentality stopped me from the continuous monthly subscription to blizzard.
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Good post, and well said. After being awarded and not receiving* any loot from PoE 34 - I can't be bothered to run lvl 35; notwithstanding my bias, have heard many Guardian buddies who also can't be bothered with it either; takes way too much grind for such pathetic rewards. A game is supposed to be fun, and that particular aspect, surely is not. [i][b]* posted about this on the HELP forum...many others' experienced same, it seems. Still no reply from the BUNGLE 'HELP' crew!?![/b][/i]
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I had a similar experience. The fight didn't feel too hard, we got the mechanics down and were doing well, it was a good difficulty and a challenge. But we kept wiping over and over, unable to win. The main causes of wipes: Enemies literally spawning on top of us out of thin air. Especially when we were in a circle dismantling a mine. This was very frustrating with lightswitch, even with a Titan bubble active, enemies spawned within the bubble and would take out at least one of us, the rest of us would have to evacuate the area, kill them and get back into the mine zone. This just felt cheap to me. Skolas being difficult to find after we kill all the ads, and then all of the sudden teleporting directly on to our location. Again, he would kill at least one of us if not causing a wipe with his stomp as we all tried to evade. I admit, if you are a big bad-ass with a stomp and teleportation, then teleporting directly on to your enemies and stomping them is a great tactic. But in a game where one of the mechanics requires all of us to stay relatively close to each other, it again, felt cheap. Players getting teleported. Okay, I get it. If you are hiding in a corner and being cheesy, Bungie doesn't like that. So, to prevent cheese spots, if you idle at the the outskirts of the map Variks teleports you back into the fight. Dick move, Variks, but I get it. Prevent cheesing, I'm cool with that. What sucks is when you are in a heavy firefight, fully engaging the enemy, and you pop back to cover for a second, pop back out to return fire, and then get teleported to the middle of the map. But you might say "Stop clinging to the outer walls and you'll be fine." There were several teleports that didn't follow that logic. One example, the worst one that happened to me, was a time when I was on the center platform of the arena. The area where if you go straight out from where you spawn. It's like a big airplane wing near the cliffs. I was standing there, Skolas teleported in front of me and advanced. I dropped off the ledge, ducked to go invisible, and while staying still to invis/regenerate health, I was teleported. I hadn't gone invisible yet, and Skolas blasted me. Again, it felt cheap. One other minor annoying problem is the inability to reload when in close proximity to your team. If the icon to absorb essence pops up, and you hit reload, it will not reload because they use the same button. Even if you are unable to absorb the essence because you are immune, the icon still appears to use the button, and you cannot reload. I don't want to be immune to reloading. When there is a mechanic in effect that makes being in close proximity to your team mates almost necessary, this is a really broken mechanic. Sitting there tapping reload and not being able to reload, is really frustrating.
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The rewards are -blam!-ing terrible
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Edited by LDR: 6/27/2015 5:58:42 AMI Agree with the shit rewards and the boredom of it, but the envcounter was easy as hell pre and post patch
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I've beaten Skolas a few times now, it's definitely one of the most difficult encounters in the game. Since the adjustments it has become much more manageable.
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2 RepliesLong read, but very valid for most of it. I would like to know why the most potent pve guns are locked behind the hardest pvp content but there's nothing worth while at the end of the hardest pve (supposedly hardest anyway) content. Garunteed loot from the skolas run should be added for sure.
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You sir are not alone, me and my team cleared the rest of the prison in about a half hour, however the skolas fight itself took us over 3 hours before na connections and frustration ended our attempt, maybe it's just me as an incompetent player. But I feel your frustration around this level, it's particularly difficult when you are in a situation like mine where you made a team of ransoms one of which lacked a mic. This level should be fun and rewarding, and while I enjoy a challenge this proved too much toning it down even a little bit would make so much more enjoyable to people like you or me.
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The PvE endgame loot doesn't justify the completion of 35. Unless their idea was, obviously, to upgrade all the older awesome weapons so that they could cut corners on new items.
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Pause.... Take the thing in strides. Shoot skolas, kill enemies, repeat this until the mines, try to get the mines as a team or save the supers for them. Spread out n get them individually if you have to. Utilize the titans bubble for cover or the hunters invisibility and save the warlocks super if things get dicey. [spoiler]skolas has been my play thing since his release [/spoiler]
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I agree with everything you've said...Skolas = waste of time
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3 RepliesI have never killed Skolas, nor tried. Is it really that hard?
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2 RepliesSo basically, we're all insane? [spoiler]...yeah I'm cool with that.[/spoiler]
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Easiest fix for this is quite simply, better rewards. Right now, elder ciphers drop way, way too easily, I'm on my 6th one, and I'm going to purposefully not turn them in, I did Skolas 3 times this week, on the char that didn't have an elder cipher, I got that, on the other two I got an arc Wolfslayer's claw, and a solar six dreg's pride, each had an active elder cipher, so I'm going to keep doing that till I get a void wolf's leash. But I'd like to see skolas have a guaranteed drop of a weapon, a treasure key or possible exotic, and the possibility of an elder cipher, for a lot of us the cipher is useless now, but I know some are still hunting for it.
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Very well spoken, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
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...The HBr Insanity?
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1 ReplyI agree with you all the way. It took me 3 hours to defeat Skolas post patch and honestly it was fun, however the level disadvantage is fustrating as hell. Adds such as Captians with shrapnel launcher and the wire rifle vandal that have aimbot and can two shot you. Not to mention the trancing bullets and tracking of both shanks and normal vandals. Level disadvantage is cheap as hell. VoG was challenging enough without level disadvantage.
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2 RepliesI disagree: Skolas burn era was annoyingly unfun; wire rifles were instant death during arc, Skolas and captains were near-instant, relentless, and constant death during sol, and never tried during void. now, its alot more fairer. yeah, there are alot of things to keep track of, but thats the challenge. you've got to be mindful of mobs and when they spawn. you've got to be mindful of mines and when they'll trigger. you've got to be mindful of taint and in turn your allies' positions. its all a coordinated effort of constants. everything triggers based on Skolas' HP, so be mindfull of these things as the battle goes on. during templar we must listen for when and where the oracles spawn, as well as when our relic holder will drop shields, all the while mobs swarm us all. during deathsinger each side needs to coordinate their progress to the other, while handling rediculously tough mobs. post burn era, the skolas fight was really fun and really satisfying. I felt like we became a really tight trio, constantly calling out crucial targets and our own pathways as well as the taint. for a 3 man event, this felt really good. this also prevents carrying as each needs to pull their weight. though, I am the type that feels true end-game content should not be completable by anyone. not anyone as in be impossible, but anyone as in any noob that has been playing for a week or two anyone. (not to say that you are such an anyone, and from the sound of it its more of team-mates.) Merr.... TL:DR; its fine, coordinate!
