Atziri boss fight accessibility is too limited and it's especially detrimental for Hardcore.

TL;DR - I think the boss fight tokenization aspect should be applied to the Atziri fight, similarly to how it is applied with other "pinnacle" because it allows for deferral and transferring of the opportunity to access and master the fight.

Aside from all of the confusion in how to actually access the Atziri fight, it takes like 40 hours of playtime to actually get in - and then you get one-shot because you've never seen any of the mechanics before, AND you can't go back and retry.

Additionally, you need EVEN MORE playtime just to re-grind another chance at the fight.

I'm not going to comment on the fact that I think many players will never even see this fight because of the time investment, because I have a separate gripe about this that's mostly related to the design of boss fight accessibility overall, and notably within a hardcore context, because I personally prefer to play in hardcore.

The way Atziri is accessed is structured in a way that makes players not want to roll in hardcore at all. And if they do, most would just permanently avoid that content and play as if the content doesn't exist. The content requires too much investment relative to the certainty of it killing you due to unfamiliarity.

If a boss fight takes a significant amount of investment to access (exacerbated by any RNG-gating), then the fight needs to be tokenized and mule-able or no hardcore player is ever going to feel that it's worth the near-certainty of deleting their character that they've "invested" all that effort into.

There needs to be a feasible opportunity for mastery by hardcore players that isn't "bash your head off of a boss with a brand new character every 40 hours".

"Just play in softcore until you can do it" is not a feasible solution because with the rate of new content in this game, it would drive a perpetual sentence of playing in softcore, which I don't really enjoy and doesn't address this issue head-on.

Before someone goes off and says "HC is a challenge and you are asking for less of a challenge" - no I'm not. I'm not asking for a chance to "redo" anything in hardcore, or for the fights to be easier, I'm asking for a way to practice boss fights that doesn't involve 40 hours of grinding for a one-chance attempt at avoiding one-shot mechanics I couldn't possibly expect.

And I have a solution - this is already achieved regarding the boss fights for Abyss, Breach, Ritual, and the Arbiter of Ash - those boss fight invitations are tokenized.

That tokenization enables the opportunity for mastery for people who prefer to play in hardcore leagues. It's important to have this, because the appeal of hardcore to begin with if heavily related to the mastery of the content and mechanics in the face of difficult and challenging content. There is a level of unfairness that is acceptable in that domain, but if there's no realistic pathway for mastery alongside the pathway to the boss, that pathway just becomes avoided.

The option to go in guns-blazing and rip to a certain one-shot in a boss fight is still there with tokenization of the fight. But it also enables other options:

- Holding onto the boss fight token until I rip naturally, and then muling it over to the softcore league to access the fight there - and probably still rip, but who cares in that case. I will still be able to see the content and learn, so maybe I will feel more comfortable taking that risk on my next HC char.

- You can trade for the tokens, or farm multiple of them. This combines well with the mule technique I just mentioned, and you can practice in a way that gives you multiple upfront attempts.

As it is now, there's just no option except a near-guarantee to delete your character. Specific to the Atziri fight, it looks like there is no option to retry if you die, although I can't be sure, because my character exited the entire league, not just the temple (lol).

Unless you're built like an overpowered god who can just circumvent all the boss mechanics, you're almost certainly sacrificing your character to a one-shot the first time you see any pinnacle boss.

That's not a big deal, however, no rational person who's spent tons of hours building a character in hardcore is going to ever choose to do that if the fight itself requires all of those hours to even access the fight in the first place.

A feasible opportunity for mastery is important to hardcore players, and tokenization of the boss fights is important for enabling it.

I hope this is changed in future updates, and I also hope that future boss fights do not continue down a "grind for 40 hours for 1 non-transferrable chance at a one-shot laden fight" path.

Agree. Was super hyped by the trailers only to get crushed by the realization that properly experiencing this content is actually super gated by hours of running maps + no ability to actually learn the boss.
Definitely needs changes and respect for player’s time