[2021] Stunlock, hard content, and what direction exactly are you trying to go?

I lurk around reddit a lot, and I barely speak on here, but I feel like Dauntless is going into a weird state. So I decided that I should speak up a little bit, at least contributing my own thoughts to the discussion, so that if Dauntless ever go into a grim state, I’ve done my part. A little bit about myself, I’m an endgame player. I’ve got my own top 5, not cracked enough to get in there every single week, but have enough knowledge to know what is needed for a top 5 run in trial. This is not a flex, just more like to say that I did my homework, and what I said following, which would involve trials, is after careful considerations and thoughts. So, you can count my opinions as a “veteran” opinion. Let’s get to it.

First of all, stunlock. Stunlocking strategy is there because of the very core design of this game - behemoths flinched when there is part break, and there’s a lot of parts on a behemoth, enough so that you can chain it, additionally, there are boops, and there are staggers. This means advanced players will still use it no matter what you try to do because it's literally built into the core design of the game. How are they gonna use it? Primal - break the part pillar then stunlock. Elder - chain part break, stagger, shock proc into another part break and the behemoth is gone (this is because your shield can't cover ALL parts of the behemoth so you can still break parts that don't have shields nearby). Even in Dauntless trial - the designed-to-be-hardest-mode in the game - the strategy is still stunlock, changing the meta has never changed this. Pre-catalyst, crit pot, early reforge era, recent hp buff trial, etc., all of these trial rotations have the same idea of top time trial run: you need to somehow stunlock it. It's a tried-and-true strategy because it is built-in in the very core of this game, and you are rewarded for it. Making the strategy harder to execute does not mean people will not use the strategy anymore, it just means they will take more time to practice it, and once they mastered it, that's still what they will use.

Secondly, hard content. Why exactly would you want to change this very core design-stunlocking behemoths- that set dauntless apart from its competitors? Would it actually be that, not stunlocking = more hard content = satisfy more veterans? I can tell you that it’s not. The game already has an example of this – Dauntless trial. In dauntless trial, you don’t stunlock behemoth easily, the behemoth is beefy, it hits super hard, it has modifiers that is super annoying (note that its annoying, not increasing the difficulty of the fight in a meaningful way). But why, why would no one is doing dauntless trial beyond their sub5 clear, except the people at the very top who pretty much only play trials everytime they get onl? Why would veterans still be asking for “hard” content, when there is already hard content in the game? The answer is simply because trial gives no reward beyond the sub 5 clear. So there is absolutely no reason to play trial if you decide to not go competitive with it, and hence, it’s not considered “real” hard content.

This difficulty:reward relationship is in terrible shape, it was shown in a very bad scaling of event rewards, which leads to the most efficient ways of farming sparks is hopping events in low-level public islands (this is only recently got adjusted), and it was shown clearly with the release of elder/primal. Why would killing a designed-to-be-harder behemoth gives the same reward as killing a normal behemoth? It does not give extra xp for veterans who just doing reforges, neither it gives extra materials/ hearts for the newbies. All it does is slowing down progression of everyone involved, for a little bit of “difficulty”. Faction points is not involved in the core loop of this game, which is reforging 123912738751 times, hence it is simply not counted as more rewards. This leads to the fact that elder/primal is nothing but annoyance on top of the very same fight people have done a thousand time before. Just make the behemoths much beefier and gives more xp, I’m sure everyone will be glad to do a longer fight for better reward.

In conclusion, if you think primal/elder can disrupt stunlock strat, you’re wrong. Stunlock is possible and optimal by design, hence every single veteran would find a way to do it anyway. Is stunlock = low skill gameplay? If the slayers is somehow so strong that one can mindlessly play and stunlock, yeah. If you have to calculate which attacks to put in which parts so that you can stunlock it, no. But what if you actually want to get rid of stunlock entirely ? Get rid of part breaks flinched, get rid of stagger, change the core of the game, don't go halfway and make useless addition like primal/elder. And lastly, is hard content = satisfaction? No. Hard content without appropriate reward is dead content. I speak here hoping the devs will consider these opinions when making directions for their next addition to the game. Real choices will come when you offer real options, don’t focus your whole attention on nerfing something out of existence, it’s annoying, and it might not even work at all.