An example, if we take it there will be 11 bosses, I could see a system where:
-boss 1 is the gear check
-bosses 2-3 are slightly harder than 1.
-bosses 4-7 are doable with only a limited amount of D4 items, but full Whitepine starters will have a hard time.
-bosses 8-10 are off limits unless each of the 4-5 players have very good D4 gear.
-Boss 11 is considerably harder than every other boss.
Bottom line is, a combination of high skill and progressingly higher gear requirements will make D4 a success.
Are there any plans already on how exactly D4 loot will look like? If it's substantially better than anything pre-D4, then item progression should be fairly simple to implement.
My concern is that if D4 loot is not substantially better than anything before it, you'll run into problems with tuning bosses.
Like I said, I'm not in favor of gear not being a factor, but it shouldn't be a deciding factor as much as skill is.
I see the main problem with the final boss though. It's the one most prone to being overtuned, and I think it should be the one where mechanics will break your back the most.
Gearcheck bosses somewhere during progression kind of depend on how they're done. Specifically calling them gearcheck could imply that you'll need all the loot from the previous ones before you can beat him, and that might be a bit much, since you'd have to farm all the previous ones for loot quite a bit. But farming them a few times before being able to progress would make a lot of sense, if the loottables gives you a reasonable chance of getting an item (with 11 bosses, I'd expect the lottables to be rather small on each boss).
It's normal for bosses to require more and more gear though, the further towards the end they are. I am by no means against that.
You just shouldn't need the entire loottable of the whole dungeon to barely defeat the final boss in my opinion. I know that the last one has to be hard, because it's the last one, and if you make it hard via mechanics, it won't be easy even with full D4 loot or possibly upcoming heroic loot. I'd rather die to being a bad player than die to not farming all previous bosses to oblivion.
But to get back to a point that isn't just me saying "don't tune to hard pls", are there specific plans for D4 loot, or plans as to how much better it is than pre D4? I think that would really give a much better basis for gearcheck requirements somewhere in the middle of the dungeon, and tuning in general, than my rambling will ever be.
If I may just formulate my take on it again, to hopefully be a bit clearer:
You should require D4 gear to progress in D4, but you shouldn't be forced to farm the living crap out of every boss before having a shot at the next one. Being able to clear the dungeon with pre-D4 gear would be bad.
However, not having the absolute best gear before going to the enxt boss shouldn't keep you from progressing. I think that having to properly execute strategies should be the deciding factor.
I merely wanted to state that tuning the bosses too hard might lead to problems. Especially in the final dungeon, overtuning might be somewhat tempting to prolong the content, but tuning the boss to gear requirements too hard leads to three problems:
1. You have to farm every previous boss for loot, depending on the size of the loot tables this becomes a chore, more than anything else. But even with manageable loot tables, bad luck can always ruin things. There are games where I've done 20 runs to see one item out of five drop only once.
2. Having the boss tuned too hard, even with the best possible gear, might make people try to get more dps/hps/tps/whateverps out of swapping classes. This is only the case if it's REALLY overtuned though, as long as classes are reasonably balanced.
3. Difficulty through mechanics is just more interesting than insane gear requirements.
That's why I say that the focus should not be on gear requirements. Focusing on mechanics and skill requirements is more interesting, and doesn't make you depend on luck with drops, and having the right class.
To get back to the opening post though:
That still leaves a lot of details:
-should D4 bosses be more complex?
-less forgiving?
-gear check?
-resistance dependencies?
-longer fights?
I think the general sentiment so far is that they should be more complex, and gear checks should be in place (and being specific on how much of a check it should be would probably clear up confusion, I think the first one can be tuned to full pre-D4, but within the dungeon itself you shouldn't require all loot from all previous bosses).
this still leaves three points that were barely discussed (maybe because I won't shut up about tuning), so let's get to that too:
I think in general, gearcheck bosses shouldn't be complex (at least the first one), but really just check gear. Further on, bosses should be less forgiving as it goes on. The final boss should be absolutely unforgiving, and require good execution of tactics.
As I said before, I think the final boss should not require resistances, but previous bosses can. Never requiring resistances in D4 makes the resistance stats a bit pointless.
Longer fights always leave room for more mistakes to be made, and are one way to increase difficulty towards the end. I think having bossfights be rather long makes sense.
I hope the last part makes more sense than the rest that I wrote, I'm kind of bad with words, sorry (seriously). I'd also like to apologize for writing such long posts, I know it's a lot to read, but I really want to make sense, which I hope I now do more than before.
On another note: Is D4 linear progression, or are there wings, or something of the like?