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6/26/2015 3:33:09 PM
223
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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Lightswitch seems like a really tough modifier to beat skolas on, but it can't possibly be harder than beating it on arc burn.. That was the biggest pain in the ass ever
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1 ReplyEdited by Universoulja: 6/27/2015 12:39:08 AMI'm a bit confused as to why people say they can't find a decent team in this game. There are hundreds of thousands playing, all you have to do is fill up your friends list with people until there is at least 2 pages deep of guardians on at prime times. It's not because I have been adding people since day one, because I upgraded consoles and had to start my friends basically from scratch. To me, not having a halfway decent fireteam ever is a blatant lack of adding people to your friends list. If you lfg some one for raids/nightfalls/strikes/ect just add them. It's not hard, takes minimal effort, and is worth it. Idk I guess I just don't understand or have been lucky in my time with this game because I really dont see how some people can say that they never have people to play with or don't have enough people to do raids. Just add every person lvl 32+ if that's what you have to do. They are only randoms until you get to know them. EDIT: Skolas encounter got dramatically easier in terms of completing it legitimately (no destroying him with whatever heavy burn was present). If you don't have 365 weapons and 42 light gear you aren't even ready for this. Is it difficult?? Meh, it was much harder before. But still not easy, nor should it be. It gives you a chance at Wolves' primaries with elemental damage as well as the elder cipher exotic bounty, warranting a pretty difficult hard raid level difficulty. No one needs anything handed to them
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I beat him like 6 times, each time I got more annoyed than the last. The very last time it took us 2hrs and 40 mins to complete POE lvl 35, at that point I said I would never do lvl 35 again. Seeing how i got my last elder cipher bounty from it, you can be certain that I'm standing by my word. Since day 1 I've said that it wasn't even fun (no joke those were my exact same words), I told my friends that if something that was here before (VOG) is more fun than what came after than there's something wrong with it. That's my take on POE especially the lvl 35 one, I'd sooner do the full vog raid (without getting rewards) than completing POE. I was one of those people that was willing to give POE a chance before judging it until I tried it myself. Well I've tried it and it's really disappointing, they should have made a raid.
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I'm not much of an authority on this as I just beat Skolas for the first try the other day. It was my first run at 35. But: I enjoyed the Skolas fight immensely. I feel like if they took any part of the mechanics out it would be too easy. We beat him without rockets. Only used hawkmoon. I do agree about the rewards though. Very lackluster. Once you have the poe gear and weapons you want, the armor and weapon cores are useless. Etheric light is cool but I really don't even need it at this point. I just burn them on any ol weapon I have on me that's not 365.
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Instead of dying all at once take turns dying. Also the diffrent classes compliment each other
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Get better friends
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I beat it pre and post patch. Both times were fun. You're playing with the wrong people, or you're bad.
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So you've only beaten him twice and you expect to just roll over him every week? I've been stuck on him too, wanna know how I beat him each time on every character/every week? I simply sought out different teammates and we adjusted our strategy and boom he went down. You have to make slight adjustments each week with the modifiers, you may not think it's needed but it does. LFG
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3 RepliesI have to disagree with you on Skolas fight not being fun. When you have 2 teammates who you are used to playing with, with good communication and teamwork this fight I find is alot of fun and more satisfying now then when we had the burns. A basic game plan and patience gets you the win every time especially this week with small arms.
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Personally I disagree about the fight itself. The few times I have done it I found it frustrating yet exhilarating. Kind of like the first time my team beat Atheon. It was fun to be challenged again. However I will agree with the rewards. They're not worth the effort really.
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2 RepliesThat is not the definition of insanity. Every -blam!-ing time I hear this shit, it convinces me that people could live their lives based on a movie quote.
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1 ReplyEdited by watchtrap: 6/26/2015 11:31:01 PMYou haven't played dragon ball xenoverse. Try farming for dragonballs in this game
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But still you're right
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7 RepliesEdited by Notcho Time: 6/26/2015 11:00:08 PMI agree and disagree at the same time. I have beaten skolas pre nerf and post nerf. With the burn active it was actually easier or cheesable by killing him fast and then disarming the mines with no opposition, but only for fireteams with the best gear otherwise it was a serious frustration. This week is harder than last week simply because both the modifiers are working against you. Idk if you know this but small arms nerfs your special weapons and heavy weapons damage. We couldn't even break the bonds with the first servitor using 3 gallys and weapons of light. This mode is a welcome new addition imho. There was a lot of community feedback stating how easy it is to cheese the raids and checkpoint boosting for players to get undeserved gear. However if you played the raids without any knowledge of how to beat em then they were extremely difficult. I just hope with the next raid the developers should seriously reduce the cheese and integrate a smarter checkpoint system where if a player has not beaten the previous checkpoints than they cannot join/launch the boss checkpoint.
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I have next to no experience in this fight, I was convinced that it was my unsuitable weapons (I used a 365 VoC, non-Arc, and an Arc shotgun which was not maxed out) that were preventing me from doing enough damage to the adds to dispose of them quickly enough for satisfaction, and my lack of experience that kept my team from getting through this in the 2 hours we played it. We made it to the mines segment fairly quickly several times, only to be swarmed in short order when that time came. I had a sudden revelation during a PoE 34 run, that the enemy spawns [i]around the mines[/i] at those times. I hadn't realized it before (not doing much PoE, ever)- so that explained a lot and will affect how I behave next time. But, yeah, I agree there's a lot going on in there. There could be a provision made so that 3 players can't be killed because one is tainted, 1 is still immune, and 1 is dead- let's say that when 1 is dead, no player is immune? But then this would instantly turn into a deliberate exploit to avoid having to pass it off, you would just die instead. There is nothing that Destiny players won't turn into a cheap exploit, rather than sweat a little for the win.
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As you pointed out, end-game activities are exactly that END-GAME ACTIVITIES. They are meant to be hard. When they are not, you get crap like Crota's End where you are just going through the motions. IMHO, Skolas with no burn is a challenge but not overwhelmingly nor unnecessarily difficult. My team and I have downed Skolas many times. I've downed him with randoms as well. Completely doable. Also, you cannot compare Trials to Skolas. Trials is ten folds harder than Skolas hence better rewards. I do, however, agree that the rewards for Skolas are sub par though.
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I always felt that A. You should ALWAYS get a random elemental primary from Skolas (possibly from the chest to prevent farming) B. The emblem should also be exotic like the Trials one.
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Fair enough
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1 ReplyIf you read the title in Vaas's voice sign here
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Elemental primaries should be guaranteed. I burnt Skolas first week and haven't attempted it since. The rewards just aren't worth the effort.
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I agree the difficulty modifier seems lazy and incomplete and is boring. The AI has very little reactive variables making it flat and repetitive. (In my opinion)
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2 RepliesEdited by IS0M0RPHIC: 6/26/2015 10:14:00 PMYou're missing something very important [spoiler]THIS GAME [i]IS[/i] THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY[/spoiler]
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Message of the post completely aside (I agree with you), that is one of my favorite definitions of insanity - because it's so similar to the definitions of a few other things. [b]Insanity:[/b] Doing the exact same thing over and over, and expecting different results. [b]Practice:[/b] Doing the exact same thing over and over, and expecting slightly better results each time. [b]Science:[/b] Doing the exact same thing over and over, and seeing if the result is the same... ...then writing it down.
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1 ReplyThe definition of insanity: reading the vex mythoclast's "sentence"
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This could have been fixed so easily and Bungie did this easy step! Make the GOSH DARN primary weapons skolas drops the BEST non exotic primaries in the game! If he dropped the best auto, best scout, best handcannon and even a bad ass little side arm Then everyone would be loving skolas!
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2 Replieshmm, its strange, the definition of insanity is exactly what people do to get better at something for example lets say your trying to get good at sniping in destiny you snipe over and over again expecting to get better results
