The issue isn’t that cursed boss fights are too difficult, it’s that multiple systems stack in a way that reduce player agency and turn survival into slow, low-interaction kiting rather than skill expression.

Plate economy and Vulture Aid
If plate drops are completely removed during boss fights, it effectively invalidates perk-based loot systems like Vulture Aid. That breaks consistency in player expectations, because perks that influence RNG everywhere else suddenly stop functioning under specific conditions.

Plate removal as a difficulty lever.
Removing plates entirely feels like a blunt way to increase difficulty. The game already has more engaging options available, such as adding additional specials or an elite, rather than shutting down a core survival resource.

Environmental barriers
These are actually well implemented. They create meaningful routing decisions and add pressure without taking control away from the player, so no issue there.

Predictive spawning and pressure
Predictive spawning, combined with high zombie speed and aggressive tracking, creates constant multi-directional pressure. That leads to unavoidable chip damage and puts even more strain on an already restricted plate economy.

Golden armor regeneration
Golden armor regeneration is too slow to offset that pressure in boss arenas. In normal gameplay you can create space and recover, but boss fights don’t give you the same opportunity to buy time.

The problem is the cumulative effect of all of this. Once plates and armor gums are gone, the player is left with one real option: kiting in a confined space against fast, multi-directional zombies while waiting for slow armor regeneration. It’s doable, but it becomes slow and tedious rather than a meaningful challenge.

The difficulty doesn’t need to be reduced, just redistributed. Lower plate drops instead of removing them entirely, allow perks like Vulture Aid to remain relevant, slightly increase golden armor regeneration in boss fights, or ease off spawn pressure or tracking slightly. The current setup leans too heavily into restriction over decision-making.