Players thought process while Bosshunting?
This was my 4th Bosshunt and I don't even want to know the time I wasted on leaving/joining teams pre-game. I have no problem playing with new people as 75%+ aren't even rank 1 but what really irri...
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I've had it plenty of times that i was in the 40 vanquish range while the rest of my team didn't even scratch 10. Always makes me wonder why these people even play a SHOOTER.
I could go on for hours about my experiences with boss hunts. From Sunflowers that don't heal, to Vampire Flowers that pick up the item, over Chompers who constantly attack the Yeti, to finally people that just idle until they get timed out. But those Chompers also ragequit after a while, so there is literally no reason to stay in a game where someone picked Chomper.
And believe me. I have tried to do the smartest thing: I went Stuffy Flower and tailed that Chomper. He could not be frozen for as long as i stayed connected and i used him as shield in front of me. The plan was perfect. But that Chomper must have thought teamplay is meaningless. So he constantly ran away from me and used burrow. While i ended up in the focus of all enemies around. And when he happily chomped on that one zombie, i got swarmed. He go frozen. And a while later he ragequit.
So i conclude once again: people don't know how to play.
It is the worst. Not always, but most of the time. And with this ridiculously unbalanced Yeti Boss Hunt (walking aimbots that can freeze you multiple times even during invulnerable animations) Popcap shows once again that they just shoveled this out instead of actually balancing it. 60 damage freeze snipes that you cannot avoid - even mid-air? Sure. let me just be so slow that i get another. So much fun. And then comes the massive AoE ice rain that never stops.
Now combine that unbalanced mess with people that don't know how to shoot. And there you have the experience. I am still waiting for a Popcap live stream, where they beat it on Crazy.
Boss Hunt needs to separate the inexperienced players from the experienced ones. It is that simple. And then someone with actual gaming experience needs to balance this mess.
This particular boss hunt is maddening. I played many rounds with some of the best players I know, a few matches with one random but mostly going in four in hand. These guys and gals and I have worked through crazy on every hunt up to this point. Yet here I am having only gotten to the gold hat this time around. Now, I'm not quite as good a player as my boss hunt friends, but I did have @redmichii to verbally keep me on track. Yet crazy eluded us. Once, the timer ran out when the yeti had about a millimeter of health left on the bar. Another time, we were about to finish when the game decided to send a disco zombie spinning into the spring's radiance circle. I think I'm finished with this one and will pass the next time it comes around.
I didn't even bother trying to play with randoms on this one. I know this post doesn't really address you main point, but i needed to put my yeti king rant somewhere.
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@pandareno1999 I got 4 helmets I think but never managed to beat it on hard/crazy.
@Screion I don't know if I'd like the experienced/inexperienced to be seperated from each other. Popcap could oblige them to complete a tutorial before being allowed to enter the portal itself. Let them be their Plant/Zombie of choice and I'm sure we won't see many Chompers/Roses anytime soon.
- The one thing to bear in mind is that a lot of children under the age of 12 play this game, and they are bound to wind up in someone's random Boss Hunt matchmaking.
For The Kings Day Out, this second time around, I was in enough games to notice what tactics work and what things need avoiding.
The first major tactic that we wound up using in each game was to get a Corn, preferably Commando Corn, up on top of the covered bridge; from there he can shoot every possible Popsickle spawning point except for the one which spawns in top of the bus near the cabins and the one which spawns under the bridge across the map. For those two we would make certain a Peashooter or other character was on the giant log in the center or a rooftop.
Our second big rule was to never venture into the gully, the low point on the map, unless we had to because getting swarmed from all directions was a certainty on Hard or Crazy.
We also made certain that whomever was on the covered bridge and rooftops stayed there until the Fool spawned and whomever was on the ground understood that they wouldn't be revived by those off the ground; we spawned pots as often as possible, or Tallnuts on those occasions we had a Cactus on the team, as distractions.
Staying off the ground proved to be critical, and most characters can get into that giant center log or onto certain rooftops with assistance or on their own and for Hard and Crazy it helps to get everyone into position before setting the bait.
All of that, of course, is really hard to do with a team of randoms- after finishing Hard and Crazy after a lot of futile efforts I tried helping out random teams and just having a Corn up on that covered bridge and staying up there sniping the Zombie Heroes until the Fool shows up actually enabled many of the random teams I wound up on as the event wound down make it farther than they probably would have otherwise.The biggest problem with these kinds of boss hunts - especially The King's Day Out - is that there are no mid-session hints whatsoever. It seems to me that those young players keep thinking about Captain Smasher and Royal Hypno-Flower; both bosses can be defeated in solo quests, but what's the point? Those players don't understand anything about how hard the online boss hunts can be if they don't understand what to do. These boss hunts come with a warning that says: BOSS HUNT IS VERY DIFFICULT. TEAMWORK IS ENCOURAGED. But the young players don't even read the info and instead go into a boss hunt session straight away without being prepared. There needs to be stronger measures put in place so that the young players aren't left caught out. There are many ideas to improve it, but Mid-Session hints are the only thing that's crucial to the success of any boss hunt. Nothing fancy.
If EA and PopCap don't come to the rescue and add mid-session hints for every boss hunt that's out there, both companies will be deep in the negative territory in terms of delivering crucial fixes.
OR, abandon the online boss hunts altogether and leave just Captain Smasher and Royal Hypno-Flower as the only boss hunt missions in solo story quests.
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I'll toss in my experience as an "experienced" player coming to a new game. (For the record I played many hours of GW1)
My brother and I entered the hunt with 0 idea what to do. We hadn't even done the quests yet due to having just purchased the game. (We've had it 3 days now, maybe 4.) My brother played it first and when I asked he told me it was straight impossible. He thought, here is target, hit target. He was certain that 3 stars was all the event gave, maybe 4-5 if the boss died. He did figure out the ice cream cones but, all of his groups failed making him think it was a lost cause. He didn't even know about the fool.
Fast forward a few hours and I join him. We get a run with a corn and pea while we were both sunflowers. (We saw the words HARD and TEAMWORK and decided we needed healers.) All it took was watching the Corn and Pea's strategies to learn how the event worked. We dominated that round, truthfully mostly due to the Corn and Pea. But, we did learn the power of two sunflower with constant beams on each other.
After that we had it down. We would adjust our tactics to match what the pick ups picked. We could be Pea, Corn, Sunflower as needed. Sadly, the two of us alone couldn't carry entire teams. So, if they didn't know what to do we were screwed. More importantly, was how bewildering it was to see someone plant a hard or crazy cone, only to have no clue that you can't directly attack the boss. (How does that happen?)
Speaking from MMO experience, the lack of information is probably 90%+ the reason for failure. Even a simple explanation of winter's grasp, what it does, and how to dispel it would go a long way. That and an explanation of the drink and its role in defeating the yeti. Perhaps, I am giving it too much credit though. Those explanations would help a new "experienced" player but, probably not children. (I think the only solution for that is an adjustment to difficulty.)
Oh well, hope that helps. Oh, and if anyone is still here. I got crowns yeti-diamond, does the event drop anything else? Finding sticker checklists for this game is downright impossible.
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