The way Gestalt and Shadow Abigail are designed and gated makes no sense

[Koomin]

-Both forms are unlocked in all new games after you defeat Celestial Champion or Fuelweaver as Wendy in any world, but you do have to actually defeat them.
-Both provide a pretty huge boost to Abigail's and Wendy's power pre-rift in worlds where they are already unlocked.
-When asked about why these affinity's are not gated by rift gear like most other characters, the designer said:
"I'm aware if you defeat the Champion once you can have Gestalt Abby before rifts in another game.  But you do have to defeat the Champion at least once before that. This is why I want pre rift option for a more survivable Abigail to work as well.  A lot of players do not yet experience rift level stuff."  

 

The more I reevaluate this statement the less sense it makes.  It also seems the more that this Beta is fleshed out, the more problematic the design choice becomes.

What is the goal of this design?  Who is it supposed to be helping?
-If the goal is to make Abigail more powerful and help new players in boss battles, why is it gated behind defeating endgame bosses?  Shouldn't they be normal skills unlocked by skill points?  New players literally can't select the skill.  The player tag normal skill is now effectively serving this purpose anyway.
-If the goal is to make Abigail more powerful post rift, why are they not gated behind rift items like pure brilliance to prevent it from having ridiculous levels of strength and combos pre rifts like it does currently?
-If we are just trying to make fun affinity abilities that people can always experience since the majority of worlds are pre rift, why are these affinity abilities so important and game-changing while also being locked from new players? 
And why are most other characters unable to use their affinities until post rift if the design goal is to make fun affinity abilities that people can always experience?

What type of player specifically needs a power boost to defeat pre rift bosses after they have already shown that they can defeat them by defeating fuelweaver of celestial champion?
I cannot tell at all what functionality gating these forms behind these bosses achieves.
This design almost intentionally makes the forms inaccessible to newer players and very overpowered for players that know what they are doing, and is the reason for the massive divide in reception.  It specifically helps more experienced players with pre rift bosses, which is an extremely odd choice.

The more that I think about this the more it seems the design goal was missed, doesn't really meet the needs of any specific player type, and that they should be gated post rift.
Player tag normal Abigail is already now a normal selectable skill and covers the need for a more survivable Abigail pre rift.  Player tag Shadow Abigail is a huge menace, but less of a design disaster if she just appears post rift.
This fix would be easily implementable and require much less design gymnastics than a lot of the others being put forward.  Putting this forward to hopefully influence a reconsideration on this.
 

[Xplan]

a precise question

[Arepantera]

7 minutes ago, Koomin said:

If the goal is to make Abigail more powerful and help new players in boss battles, why is it gated behind defeating endgame bosses?

To be fair, it's not like beating CC and AF solo, completely by yourself, is the only way to unlock affinities.
To give an example. In my group of friends, 9 of us play DST. 
Only 2 of us actively fight CC, AF and post rift bosses. 3 of them joing mega base worlds that have many easy methods to kill those bosses, the other 5 straight up just use console commands.

I understand the irony of putting good pre-rift perks behind those 2 bosses, but in practicality I think it makes sense.
I'm not sure but I think modded kills count too, but if they do, then they could for fun gun down those bosses with goofy weapons and get those skills still.
 

[Koomin]

8 minutes ago, arepana said:

To be fair, it's not like beating CC and AF solo, completely by yourself, is the only way to unlock affinities.
To give an example. In my group of friends, 9 of us play DST. 
Only 2 of us actively fight CC, AF and post rift bosses. 3 of them joing mega base worlds that have many easy methods to kill those bosses, the other 5 straight up just use console commands.

I understand the irony of putting good pre-rift perks behind those 2 bosses, but in practicality I think it makes sense.
I'm not sure but I think modded kills count too, but if they do, then they could for fun gun down those bosses with goofy weapons and get those skills still.
 

What is the point of the design though?  Even if people do it this way, why make people join a mega base world to kill an end game boss once just to experience an ability that is now needing to be balanced for pre rift?  It is just pointless extra steps.  Beyond that, there is a pretty large percentage of new players that don't have a group of friends with a post rift world, and console players cannot even use commands, so a lot of newer players actually are blocked from these abilities.  

On top of that, most people would probably have had no issue with these powerful abilities if they were gated post rift.  Now Klei will need to balance them for early game because they are so strong, which will make every group of player mad.  Half of them will be upset that it is too strong, and half upset that it is too weak.  They could have just made strong abilities and gated them with rifts and made everyone happy.  Klei have just designed themselves into a corner when there was a pretty clear and easy solution from the start.

[Soul7k]

20 minutes ago, arepana said:

To be fair, it's not like beating CC and AF solo, completely by yourself, is the only way to unlock affinities.
To give an example. In my group of friends, 9 of us play DST. 
Only 2 of us actively fight CC, AF and post rift bosses. 3 of them joing mega base worlds that have many easy methods to kill those bosses, the other 5 straight up just use console commands.

I understand the irony of putting good pre-rift perks behind those 2 bosses, but in practicality I think it makes sense.
I'm not sure but I think modded kills count too, but if they do, then they could for fun gun down those bosses with goofy weapons and get those skills still.
 

not only this but its once per account to unlock for all characters

[Well-met]

this is an issue with skill trees in general.

They should be tied to worlds, not accounts.

[Koomin]

Just now, Soul7k said:

not only this but its once per account to unlock for all characters

I would think that stating that the design is bad but it is really easy to circumvent and bypass the intent of the boss gating is an argument against the design instead of supporting it.  If most people are not actually unlocking the abilities as designed because it does not work well, that seems like it was designed badly.

[Arepantera]

12 minutes ago, Koomin said:

What is the point of the design though? 

To give a sense of progression, which will carry onto other newer servers as well.
Also, some skills are given in pre-rift scenarios as a way to buff characters that overall aren't good.

Like for example, willow. If you had to use 1 pure horror everytime you wanted to cast her shadow flames, she'd be a terrible character, but since she can cast them since day 1, she's one of the best characters in the game.

[Soul7k]

7 minutes ago, Koomin said:

I would think that stating that the design is bad but it is really easy to circumvent and bypass the intent of the boss gating is an argument against the design instead of supporting it.  If most people are not actually unlocking the abilities as designed because it does not work well, that seems like it was designed badly.

who is this most

[Koomin]

1 minute ago, Soul7k said:

who is this most

 

34 minutes ago, arepana said:

In my group of friends, 9 of us play DST. 
Only 2 of us actively fight CC, AF and post rift bosses. 3 of them joing mega base worlds that have many easy methods to kill those bosses, the other 5 straight up just use console commands.
 

Just as an example, of this person's play group 8 people out of 10 are not engaging with the intended gating and completely bypassing the intended sense of progression because they don't want to deal with it.  I definitely can't speak for everyone, but it does seem pretty common even of the few people in this thread.

[Steorra]

And Gestalt Abi was gated by moon phase. 

This could be another strange thing but I know this is something relative with occultism. 

In my opinions, I prefer to see Gestalt Abi as an more powerful and invincible Abi form options for anti-bosses.

But it's obviously that there were many concerns and worries about if Gestalt Abi would be OP or not.

I guess these worries also based on the gate of Gestalt Abi - You could achieve this form pre-rift.

Maybe to change the gate of Gestalt Abi into "1 pure brilliance under full moon" would sweep those worries away for making Gestalt Abi become more powerful? This would make Gestalt Abi become post-rift only. We already know how those post-rift only Lunar skill were powerful, i.e. Winona.

Correspondingly, Shadow Abi has a more strange gate at the current stage. the "murder" trigger makes her become a completely pre-rift form.

However, we could found that the most power of Shadow affinity Abi was hidden behind the Shadow Sisterhood II, which was an powerful elixir who need pure horror.

It seems the Shadow form of Abi who were easily achievable pre-rift have about 25~35% strength of Shadow Abi, which have planar damage enhancement for post-rift game;

But Cursed Vex holding the other 65% strength of Shadow affinity, pure horror was needed, but it's power is serve on pre-rift.

This is also confusing for me.

[Koomin]

18 minutes ago, Steorra said:

Maybe to change the gate of Gestalt Abi into "1 pure brilliance under full moon" would sweep those worries away for making Gestalt Abi become more powerful? This would make Gestalt Abi become post-rift only. We already know how those post-rift only Lunar skill were powerful, i.e. Winona.

Yes I would be very much happier with Gestalt Abigail becoming more powerful if it was post rift only.  It is not fun to start the game with the most powerful weapons available and not have to work hard to get them.  But if you have to work hard to get the reward and reach the post rift part of the game, it is deserved and fun and I think almost everyone would agree it makes sense to be powerful.