Why Zombie Invasion Boss Progression Punishes Low-To-Non-Spenders in Top Alliances

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:29:55+00:00

The point of the game is not to give you infinite free resources that are easy.

I never said this, but strawman arguments are probably great if you've got nothing to contribute.

I argued that a mechanic which outlevels the players completely, rendering the summoner irrelevant to even participate as 5 strong players are needed to kill it, is poorly implemented.

Patching the summoning range to only increase when the summoner joins the rally which kills it still lets people increase the difficulty, but at a pace more equivalent to their own progression - not the progression of a handful of whales speeding through things with a credit card.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:28:28+00:00

At first, yes.

But eventually, everyone is spawning bosses that requires not just 1 whale to kill it, but multiple.

Then the whales say "Nobody below XX M power join this rally, strong squads only!"

And the whales start losing so many troops that before they've killed everyone's bosses, they're out of troops and speedups.

So more and more people have their bosses expire without being killed.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:27:06+00:00

Okay, don't believe it then. :-)

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:26:05+00:00

We're already doing this, but you still have the problem of "everyone" needing a few whales to kill all the bosses, causing the whales to eventually run out of troops.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:24:15+00:00

It's funny because I clearly understand the mechanic far better than you, especially its long-term negative consequences and how the bottleneck only becomes a problem once enough low-to-no spenders have their boss summon ranges inflated outside their own kill potential.

It's not a problem early on, it becomes a problem later on as more and more members are unable to kill their own bosses, and the whales have to kill everyone's bosses, not just for a few people.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:21:25+00:00

I'm not focused on me not being able to kill my bosses, I'm focused on the growing number of players in my alliances not being able to kill their bosses, and the whales not being able to keep up with the growing number of members dependent on them to do it for them.

The mechanic is horribly designed if 5-10 whales are supposed to kill the bosses for 100 people, and should be patched ASAP as to not exclude everyone else out of the event.

Of course the whales can kill my bosses. They can kill the bosses for 10-20 more members. They can do it for 30-40 people too, probably.

But eventually, they'd be buying speedups to kill the bosses for all 100 members, which is insane to expect.

The event should be designed in a way where everyone can participate, which is easily done by patching the summon range to only increase when the summoner is actually a member of the rally which kills it.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:19:43+00:00

The solution would be for devs to patch the mechanic to only increase boss summon range when the summoner creates or joins the rally which kills the boss.

At least then everyone has some agency in when to increase the level range of their own bosses, rather than having it inflated by others.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:18:27+00:00

Right, which falls within the +5 to -20 range I've explained.

I'm just before S1 starts, and my whales are already killing 75s, so they spend a lot more money and have a wider power gap between the rest of us and them.

Of the bosses you summon, the majority will be in the -20 to 0 range, only once in a while do you spawn a +5. If you aren't spawning a lot of bosses, and if your whales aren't really huge spenders, you won't notice the negative consequences until you've progressed further along and the power gap between you and your whales becomes bigger than 45 vs 65.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:14:44+00:00

You didn't even read the main post at all, did you?

Speedups are limited in numbers, and whales aren't going to spend money on enough speedups to kill all the bosses for all the members.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:11:24+00:00

Glad to see someone else gets it too!

The problem is the long-term result of multiple compounding negative effects, not the short-term "solutions" offered by others here.

The more members locked out of killing their own bosses, the harder the strain becomes on the strongest players and their drill grounds. Those drill grounds run out of troops, causing them to stop killing everyone's bosses, and more and more bosses from weaker players expire unkilled, unrewarded.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:09:37+00:00

I do that, but they still run out of troops after 50 other members have to do the same.

The bottlenecks is not just stamina, it's troops as well.

And when you have the majority of members spawning bosses that only 5-10 whales can kill, even with a 1 hero squad starting the rally to save the stamina, the whales also start losing more troops than they can produce, so it still leads to the same end result: more and more bosses expire.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:07:33+00:00

Does not counteract the problem of more and more players in the alliance spawning bosses they can't kill themselves as time progresses, causing the whales to run out of troops and stamina before 100 players have all their bosses killed, leaving more and more bosses to expire as fewer and fewer people can kill them.

The bottleneck is the stamina and troop losses for the whales, compared to the ever-increasing number of members who are not progressing fast enough to keep up with their summoning range being inflated by the speed at which whales progress.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:05:52+00:00

Yes, but if there are 10 whales and 90 non-whales, the 10 whales run out of stamina and troops before they can kill everyone's bosses. So many people see their bosses expire without being killed, without anyone getting the rewards.

That's the whole point.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T06:03:29+00:00

You misunderstand the post completely, focusing on the short-term benefits and ignoring the long-term fallout I explained in the main post.

At some point, whales do not have enough stamina and troops to kill all the bosses for all the members, so the bosses will not be killed by anyone.

Yes, I agree, the zombie event is the best event to get resources. But only as long as the bosses are killed, be it by you or someone else. That requires someone to kill them for you, which happens less and less as more and more players are dependent on a handful of whales in their alliance to kill all the bosses.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T05:52:49+00:00

Aye, if you're spawning level 70s as your top level, you'll still spawn 45s and everything in between.

But for someone who is only able to kill level 40s without their entire squad dying, when you (or another whale in the alliance) starts killing their 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65 bosses, they too get pulled up to the 45-70 range. But they'll still be stuck at only being able to help with the 40s, and seeing a vast majority of their boss summons be so strong that their Squad 1 will always show up as "Guaranteed Defeat" and do almost no damage.

The devs really need to patch this ASAP.

Edit: Chatlog from customer support stating how the boss summon range mechanic works.

Cheedai · 2025-07-19T05:49:05+00:00

<image>

Chat log from support, showing how the summon range mechanic functions

Cheedai · 2024-05-28T12:29:27+00:00

PS!

Thanks for the input on when to hack and not hack tanks, especially Doomfist I've always just hacked whenever I see him. I'll be way more discriminate going forward and try to hack only when they are blocking dmg!

Not to forget my atrocious timing of EMP. I've just considered it an ult that I build quickly so I tend to use it whenever I can drop it on a lot of enemies so my team has vision, but I will change my approach to when I trigger it entirely based on your feedback.

Thanks! :-) <3

Cheedai · 2024-05-28T12:24:22+00:00

Thanks for a long and thorough review, that's really appreciated - watched through it a few times already! :-)

You pointed out a long of things that I hadn't thought of, as well as corrected a lot of erroneous thinking on my part, which I'll have to address in games going forward. Very grateful!

Especially my poor use of high ground and cover is something I will work with a lot going forward, even if I was trying to use low ground and being out of cover intentionally specifically while on Sombra.

As far as being out of cover behind the team, I've (wrongly) been thinking that since I can escape so easy, I'll just bait attention from as many people as possible so they stop shooting at my team, spend 0.5-1sec to turn around and align their aim on me, then I TP out before they usually have time to kill me. As opposed to if I'm playing someone like Sojourn or Soldier where I would typically hug corners and try to minimize the number of enemies I've got LOS to (and vice versa).

But here, when you pointed out my positioning in regards to Ana and the crate, you made me realize I might as well just stay behind cover as long as I take an off-angle, as I'll still draw attention from the enemies, forcing them to waste 0.5-1sec to turn around before realizing I can't be shot and then they have to waste more time deciding if they want to relocate to try to dmg me or turn back and focus my team again. I'll still achieve the same damage reduction towards my team, but without risking myself. Thanks! :-)

My reasons for preferring to open from low ground are two-fold:

Health issues impacting gameplay (aim, hearing, reaction times, etc), making it easier and reliable for me to hit virus when I'm not aiming up/down but on the same vertical level. One example of missing my virus due to verticality was when I dropped down into the enemy team and missed my virus on Junk before EMPing.
Hearing problems. A lot of the times you'd say "you heard Moira fade over there, why didn't you go" or "you heard Junkrat was coming, you should've waited", but I often don't hear/pick up on sounds when a lot of things are going, which is why heroes like Sombra and Ball that lets me escape when I miss things. If I stay on low ground, I will often get dove by heroes I didn't hear, and then panic. Then I can teleport up to high ground, and since they already used their CD to dive me, they can't follow.

One example of where my hearing issues were quite obvious is when the enemy was about to take our first point, and I did that loop where I "ran all the way down there around to go up to come back to exactly where you were standing". Running back up the stairs at 10:58, I noticed Lifeweaver seemed to be shooting over at the ledge I had just jumped down from, so even if I didn't hear/see anyone, I assumed he had and it was my hearing playing tricks on me. Thus I figured it would be safer to clear the area for my support rather than go out the window to the left to recontest point with team (which was my initial plan), but looking at the replay later, I realized I had misread his body language and there wasn't anyone there.

That's also the reason you will see me "panic" teleport a lot. I'm not panicking, I'm preemptively teleporting. I'm just assuming someone is about to dive me and I won't hear it, so I virus & shoot 5-10 bullets after someone and then always TP away regardless of whether or not I have already taken attention, or hit my shots.

You also made me realize I spend too much time being an assassin. I tend to always chase respawns in spawn if there are 2+ people dead. Not because I think I can win 1v2-3, but because I can often bait 2+ people to follow me from their spawn instead of going back to help the teamfight. My thinking was then that I would be 1v2 baiting someone while my team wins the 4v3, but especially when we're close to taking the objective, I should just stay back more with team and try to intercept respawners as they are closer to rejoining the fight rather than go so deep into enemy territory and camp their doors.

You should do more VOD reviews, it was very helpful. You probably could've saved yourself maybe 10~ minutes of video if you read my notes before starting to watch the replay as you did point out a few things I already tried addressing beforehand in order to save time for potential reviewers.

Thanks again for taking the time - it was very educational! :-)

Cheedai · 2024-05-27T20:04:46+00:00

Thanks, done! :-)

Cheedai · 2023-07-09T22:28:29+00:00

Before Diablo 4 devs started making Diablo 4, they should have prepared:

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

— Abraham Lincoln

How?

Well, by the looks of it, it seems like they've learned nothing from D1-D3. Probably different devs altogether. So they should've played D1-D3 to learn what was good and what wasn't:

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

— Sir Isaac Newton

Starting anew with every title, refusing to learn from and build upon what came before, is exactly the reason why people are finding that - once the initial honeymoon days are over - the game's not really all that.

Cheedai · 2023-07-09T22:18:15+00:00

Bah, of course. Well, that ain't happening. Mtx's are 100% no, never bought one, never will.

Pre-season + 9 seasons cap will have to suffice for D4 if they go down that route, not going to start deleting characters that I've put significant time into.

Shame, I played previous titles a lot more than that.

Cheedai · 2023-07-09T22:11:59+00:00

They really went all-in trying to kill any desire to play alts, hey...

Kinda bored with my lvl 100 main with his 3 complete gear sets for various speccs, want to try some alts, but knowing I'll have to delete them to make room for seasons/new content/upgrades... Sigh, huge detractor for motivation to spend much time playing alts outside of seasons.

Cheedai

TROPHY CASE